Half a century after humans first walked on the moon, a number of private companies and nations are planning to build permanent bases on the lunar surface. Despite the technological progress since...
Science
Science of Champion Runners: Inside The Body of Elite Endurance...
The 40th anniversary of the London Marathon takes place on Sunday, October 4 2020. Athletes will run on a closed-loop circuit around St James’s Park before finishing on The Mall. This year’s lineup...
Nature Versus Nurture: How Modern Science Is Rewriting It
The question of whether it is genes or environment that largely shapes human behaviour has been debated for centuries. During the second half of the 20th century, there were two camps of scientists –...
Super Shoes: Explaining Athletics’ New Technological Arms Race
In the 1960s, when traditional cinder athletics tracks were replaced by spongy, synthetic surfaces, endurance running experienced a revolution. Long distance runners began clocking far faster times...
Chimpanzees in Volatile Habitats Evolved to Behave More Flexibly...
A new study explores how chimpanzees behaviour becomes more flexible in the face of climate volatility and what that might say about human evolution One of the reasons humans are so resilient is our...
Here’s How Scientists Know the Coronavirus Came from Bats and...
One of the conspiracy theories that have plagued attempts to keep people informed during the pandemic is the idea that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory. But the vast majority of scientists...
Europe is Recruiting Astronauts: Here’s What it Takes to Become...
For the first time in 11 years, the European Space Agency (ESA) is recruiting new astronauts. Applications will open on March 31 2021 for eight weeks, followed by a six-stage selection process to...
Phosphorus is Vital for Life on Earth – and We’re Running Low
Phosphorus is an essential element that is contained in many cellular compounds, such as DNA and the energy carrier ATP. All life needs phosphorus and agricultural yields are improved when phosphorus...
Marie Stopes Opened the UK’s First Birth Control Clinic 100...
Marie Stopes opened Britain’s first clinic offering birth control advice to married women. Born in Edinburgh in 1880, Stopes was an author, women’s rights campaigner and trained paleobotanist. She...
Coronavirus is Evolving but so are our Antibodies
The emergence of “variants of concern” has raised questions about our long-term immunity to the coronavirus. Will the antibodies we make after being infected with or vaccinated against the dominant...
Can the Laws of Physics Disprove God?
The reader’s question: I still believed in God (I am now an atheist) when I heard the following question at a seminar, first posed by Einstein, and was stunned by its elegance and depth: ‘If...
The Human Genome at 20: How Biology’s Most-Hyped Breakthrough...
When President Bill Clinton took to a White House lectern 20 years ago to announce that the human genome sequence had been completed, he hailed the breakthrough as “the most important, most...
Mars: Perseverance Rover Set for Nail-Biting Landing – Here’s...
Following “seven minutes of terror,” after it reaches Mars’ upper atmosphere, Nasa’s Perseverance rover is expected to land on the surface of the red planet at 20:55 GMT on February 18. This...
Will Humans Go Extinct? For all the Existential Threats, We’ll...
Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct. Some left descendants...
Giant Ancient Sharks Had Enormous Babies That Ate Their Siblings...
Made famous by the 2018 blockbuster The Meg, the largest predatory shark ever discovered, the megalodon is a bit of a mystery. We know it lived between 15 and 3.6 million years ago and it reached at...
Parasites: What Causes Some Species to Evolve to Exploit Others?
If you saw the first episode of David Attenborough’s new BBC series Perfect Planet, you will have seen the astounding bloodsucking behaviour of the vampire finches. These small birds exist only...
Wormholes May be Lurking in the Universe – and New Studies are...
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity profoundly changed our thinking about fundamental concepts in physics, such as space and time. But it also left us with some deep mysteries...
Superbugs Have an Arsenal of Defences — But We’ve Found a New...
Researchers have not discovered any new antibiotics in decades. But our new research, published today in Nature Microbiology, has found a way to give a second wind to the antibiotics we do have...
Solar Panels Capture More Sunlight With Capsaicin – The...
Here’s some news hot off the press. Researchers have found a secret ingredient for making solar panels that absorb the sun’s energy more efficiently. Depending on what you like to eat...
How to Get People From Earth to Mars and Safely Back Again
There are many things humanity must overcome before any return journey to Mars is launched. The two major players are NASA and SpaceX, which work together intimately on missions to the International...