Where 2020 XL5 would appear in the dawn sky if we could see it with the naked eye from Chile. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva, CC BY-NC-SA Research has shown that the Earth trails an asteroid barely a kilometre across in its orbit about the Sun – only the second such bodyContinue Reading
African elephant being hunted Roger Brown Photography/shutterstock Do you have any desire to stalk and kill an elephant? Probably not, but some relish the idea. Recently the world’s largest trophy hunting convention took place in Las Vegas, organised by Safari Club International, an influential US-based hunting lobby group. Attendees bidContinue Reading
Some animals and plants are rapidly adapting to our warming, polluted world. How alarming that is depends on your perspective.Continue Reading
YuliaLisitsa/Shutterstock The autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, is described as an intensely pleasant tingling sensation originating in the scalp and neck, and spreading down the body. ASMR is elicited by a range of video and auditory triggers, such as watching someone pretend to perform relaxing actions like massaging orContinue Reading
Life in the wild can be tough, and sometimes animals don’t have the luxury of taking time out when they are sick. That’s certainly the reality of life for vervet monkeys living in Southern Africa, even though parasites and viruses are an ever-present component of animal life. We know howContinue Reading
When the Yorkshire Evening News reported on an address delivered by 25-year-old physicist Florence Bell at a scientific conference held in Leeds in 1939, it wasn’t her science that made the headlines, but simply the fact that she was a woman doing science. What neither the writers who came upContinue Reading
Ever stumbled upon a huge fossil on your holiday? That’s what happened to me and two friends in January 2018, on a beach in Howick in the north of England, while on a geological road-trip across England and Wales. It was pure fluke, but it turned out that we hadContinue Reading
As countries declare endemicity and drop restrictions, how does a battered and bruised society embrace a sudden return to normality?Continue Reading
With the growth in outdoor swimming during the pandemic, and with more people trying it out this winter, the question of whether the body gets used to cold temperatures if you swim often is much debated. The short answer is “it can”. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.Continue Reading
For decades, scientists thought that being more carnivorous set our ancestors along their evolutionary path. New evidence casts doubt on this theory.Continue Reading
