Planck in 1918, the year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory (Image: B Lagrelius & Westphal/ The American Institute of Physics ) Long before quantum mechanics became a household term, Max Planck was already thinking carefully about what it actually means to do science. In this quote,…
Representative Image of a Swiss glacier covered with sheep’s wool, showcasing environmental innovation in melting ice protection (AI Generated Image) As Switzerland’s glaciers continue to lose ice, researchers are testing an unusual material that could offer a more environmentally friendly way to slow melting in small, protected areas: sheep’s wool. The “Keep It Wool” project,…
AI representation/ChatGPT Most people cannot remember their first birthday, their first steps or the days they spent learning to speak. Even though those years shaped the rest of their lives, the memories usually disappear from conscious recall. This is known as infantile amnesia, or childhood amnesia. It refers to the lack of clear, personal memories…
Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) at Alibel Tortoise Park, Mahe, Seychelles (2025). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons Madagascar began rebuilding a giant tortoise population in 2018 with only 12 founder animals at the Anjajavy Reserve in the north-west of the country. The small group faced an important challenge because a population started from so few animals…
Deep in Ethiopia’s Harenna Forest, a snake that initially appeared familiar has turned out to represent a species new to science. The discovery began with a juvenile female collected from the forest and kept for observation as she grew. The appearance gradually raised questions about whether she belonged to a known egg-eating snake. What followed…
For generations, vultures were part of the everyday landscape across India. They gathered around cattle carcasses, circled above rubbish dumps and cleared away animal remains before they had time to linger. Then, in the 1990s, their numbers began to collapse at an extraordinary rate. A veterinary painkiller called diclofenac was eventually identified as a major…
In 1986, captive-bred bearded vultures began returning to the Alps after the species had disappeared from the mountain range decades earlier. The reintroduction programme released young birds at sites across the region, with the first successful wild breeding recorded in 1997. By 2021, researchers estimated that 344 bearded vultures were living in the Alps, including…
The Moon is covered with impact marks from ancient collisions, including some of the largest craters in the Solar System. One enormous lunar basin stretches more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) across. The Moon has been taking hits for billions of years, but one of its newest scars managed to escape notice entirely. An asteroid…
Researchers at the University of Florida are deploying high-tech rabbit decoys across the Everglades, designed to mimic the signals Burmese pythons associate with prey. The fake rabbits can produce movement, scent, vibrations, and heat, all cues that pythons use while hunting for food. The goal is simple, lure the invasive snakes out of hiding so…
The birds live in the Sand Sagebrush Ecoregion, which stretches across southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas and a small part of western Oklahoma. (American Bird Conservancy photo) Colorado’s lesser prairie-chicken population has fallen from more than 80,000 birds in 1975 to just 89 breeding males, according to a 2024 data. To restore the population of the…
