Science

Scientists have uncovered plastic pollution in one of Earth’s most isolated environments, challenging the long-held belief that the deep ocean remains largely untouched by human activity. Analysing animals living more than 2,000 metres beneath the sea, researchers discovered that 92% contained microplastics, offering some of the clearest evidence yet that plastic waste has reached even…

The Amazon rainforest is never truly quiet, and its endless chorus of chirps, whistles and calls may carry far more information than humans realise. Scientists studying wildlife in the Peruvian Amazon have uncovered a remarkable network in which birds and primates pick up information from one another’s alarm calls when predators appear. Small canopy birds…

Zoe Kissane says the birds often ate at seed spills around agricultural operations (Supplied: Murdoch Univeristy) Scientists tracking endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoos across Western Australia’s Wheatbelt over three breeding seasons found worrying levels of chemical contamination in the birds’ food. Four out of five seed samples tested positive for pesticides, with some containing chemical levels…

The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. In the enlarged section, the nematosomes—which are key to the immune system of these invertebrates—are highlighted. (Credit: HHU/Nida Kaya) A simple sea anemone (a small plant with white, red, blue or purple flowers that are shaped like cups and have dark centres) can distinguish helpful bacteria from harmful invaders despite…

Albert Einstein (Image: Wikipedia) Some people move through the world treating almost everything as ordinary. Others notice something remarkable in the same ordinary details. A line widely credited to Albert Einstein names that exact split. “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as…

For decades, archaeologists believed that while early humans had learned to control naturally occurring fires more than a million years ago, they only mastered the ability to create fire much later. A remarkable discovery in southeast England is now challenging that timeline. Tiny fragments of iron pyrite, found alongside heat-damaged stone tools and ancient hearth…

Flowerhorn cichlids are aquarium fish prized for their bright-gold colour and prominent head humps. Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP/Getty Images A human-bred aquarium fish prized for its bright gold colour and distinctive head hump has escaped into a volcanic crater lake in the Philippines, where scientists fear it is threatening native wildlife and spreading into local aquaculture.Flowerhorn…

In 1970, Soviet scientists began drilling into the ground on the Kola Peninsula in the far northwest of the country, hoping to reach deeper into the earth than anyone before them. Almost two decades later, in 1989, the project hit its final depth of 12,262 metres, making it the deepest vertical borehole ever created by…

On a cold November morning in 1957, a small stray dog that had wandered the streets of Moscow became part of one of the defining moments of the early Space Age. Her name was Laika. She was placed inside Sputnik 2, a spacecraft built in haste after the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik just…

An image of the rediscovered coral reef by Gérard Zinzindohoué (Photo: Gérard Zinzindohoué) A deep-water coral reef off the coast of West Africa that was believed to be dead for six decades has been discovered alive and thriving more than 50 metres below the ocean surface.The forgotten reef was first identified off the coast of…