Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg. Daniele COSSU/Shutterstock Climate change and COVID-19 are the two most significant crises faced by the modern world – and widespread behaviour change is essential to cope with both. This means that official messaging by government and other authorities is critical. To succeed, leaders need to communicateContinue Reading
Andre Pattenden/English Heritage Stonehenge, an icon of European prehistory that attracts more than a million visitors a year, is rarely out of the news. Yet, surprisingly, there is much we don’t know about it. Finding the sources of the stones used to build the monument is a fundamental question thatContinue Reading
US police forces have been turning to technology to track down Black Lives Matter protestors. Content from social media platforms and affiliated sites has been instrumental in the authorities being able to identify protestors based on photos of their faces, clothes and hair, or on the fact that they postedContinue Reading
Stronger together. Shutterstock Science is at the heart of the fight against COVID-19. While some scientists are busy developing drugs, vaccines and monitoring changes in the virus’s genetic material, others are studying the spread of the virus, informing policies that help to contain the infection. Science also underpins decision-making andContinue Reading
Khakimullin Aleksandr/Shutterstock How much do clouds weigh? – Torben, aged 10, London, UK We see clouds often: fluffy clouds on a nice summer’s day, towering thunderstorms, wispy high clouds or even grey clouds that cover the whole sky for days. Clouds seem to be floating in the air, which mightContinue Reading
This image of the NGC 1398 galaxy, which is located in the Fornax cluster, was taken with the Dark Energy Camera. Dark Energy Survey/Flickr, CC BY-SA Dark energy is one of the greatest mysteries in science today. We know very little about it, other than it is invisible, it fillsContinue Reading
Jag_cz/Shuttestock Microbes are the truly dominant group of lifeforms. These invisible pieces of biogenic matter have been running Earth’s affairs for billions of years. Plants and animals popped up as the by-products of microbial mergers relatively recently in our planet’s history. Understanding microbes is not easy. It took us someContinue Reading
St Helena, where Earth's magnetic field behaves strangely. Umomos/Shutterstock Deep inside the Earth, liquid iron is flowing and generating the Earth’s magnetic field, which protects our atmosphere and satellites against harmful radiation from the Sun. This field changes over time, and also behaves differently in different parts of the world.Continue Reading
Rocket carrying the Hope probe. MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRIES HAND/EPA The United Arab Emirates (UAE) successfully launched its Mars mission dubbed “Al Amal”, or “Hope”, from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan on July 20. This is the first space mission by the UAE, and the first Arab mission toContinue Reading
AI has its limitations in a crisis. Shutterstock It should have been artificial intelligence’s moment in the sun. With billions of dollars of investment in recent years, AI has been touted as a solution to every conceivable problem. So when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, a multitude of AI models wereContinue Reading
