Science

A full moon arrives at the start of February, settling into the evening sky with little fuss but quiet interest. The event itself is familiar, yet this one carries a detail that does not come around often. Alongside the bright moon, nearby stars and clusters briefly share the same patch of sky. For observers across…

As forests disappear, mosquitoes are not vanishing with them. Instead, they are adapting in ways that bring them closer to people. A new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution shows that in Brazil’s rapidly shrinking Atlantic Forest, many mosquito species are increasingly feeding on humans rather than on wild animals. Scientists warn that…

In 1905, a 26-year-old patent clerk named Albert Einstein looked at the universe and discovered that time was not what we thought it was. It was not linear. For centuries, everyone assumed the same thing about reality. Space was just there, like an empty room. Time was a steady flow, like a river moving at…

Scientists have achieved a genetic feat once thought impossible: removing an entire extra human chromosome using gene-editing technology. In a landmark laboratory study published in PNAS Nexus, researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 to delete the additional copy of chromosome 21 that causes Down syndrome. After the edit, human cells grown in the lab showed gene-activity patterns much…

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected method to track falling satellites by listening to the Earth itself. Researchers found that when space debris re-enters the atmosphere at extreme speeds, it produces powerful shockwaves that travel through the ground and are picked up by earthquake-monitoring instruments. By analysing these signals, scientists can reconstruct the object’s flight path,…

The Moon might be getting some attention in 2032. A small asteroid, roughly 60 metres wide, could smack it. Experts say the odds are low, about 4 percent, but that’s not zero. And that little number has scientists both nervous and excited. Nervous for obvious reasons: debris, satellite damage, potential fireballs raining down. Excited because…

NASA’s Juno scan reveals what lies below frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon (AI-generated) New measurements from NASA’s Juno spacecraft have offered a clearer picture of what lies beneath the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. During a close flyby in 2022, Juno gathered microwave data that allowed scientists to probe the moon’s icy crust to…

It sounds a little unbelievable at first. A caterpillar turns into what is basically a biological soup inside a chrysalis, then re-emerges as a butterfly or moth with wings, new senses, and a completely different lifestyle. So you’d assume everything from the caterpillar days gets wiped clean, right? No memories, no lessons learned, no lingering…

For people living with severe paralysis, video games were once among the many everyday experiences thought to be permanently out of reach. That assumption is now being quietly overturned. In recent demonstrations, paralysed patients implanted with a brain–computer interface from Neuralink have played video games using nothing but their thoughts. No controllers. No hand movements….

Unusual sounds have a habit of attracting unusual interpretations. Online, a short audio clip of thin, whistling electronic tones is surprising listeners: at first, it sounds like random noise, but when the accompanying sentence is revealed, many report suddenly hearing the words hidden within the same tones. The effect is striking and unsettling, producing a…