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
Some species can do well in the face of extreme hardship. George Burba/Shutterstock Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth. The world was plunged into darkness, killing the dinosaurs and over 90% of all species alive. Today, every living thing descends from the handful of surviving species. ButContinue Reading
It's long been a mystery how fast the Earth's magnetic field changes. Andrey VP/Shutterstock The Earth’s magnetic field, generated 3,000km below our feet in the liquid iron core, is crucially important to life on our planet. It extends out into space, wrapping us in an electromagnetic blanket that shields theContinue Reading
Neowise seen from the International Space Station. NASA Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Another thing that makes this comet interesting is that it has a relatively long orbital period, meaning it was only discovered aContinue Reading
_Schleitheimia_ (left) and _Plateosaurus_ (above right). University of Utrecht, Author provided Dinosaurs were the dominant group of animals on Earth for over 150 million years. Long-necked, plant-eating sauropods such as Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus are probably among the most famous dinosaurs, in part thanks to their huge size and strangeContinue Reading
Since the UK government began lifting pandemic lockdown restrictions, there have been warnings that going too fast would allow the coronavirus to start spreading again. And ever since, there have been reports about parts of the country that have seen the R number – a key measure of the spreadContinue Reading
