Esme Stallard Climate and science correspondent Reporting fromUN Oceans Conference, Nice, France Federico Cabello/Getty Images The UN Ocean conference has been heralded a success, with more countries ratifying a key treaty to protect marine life and more progress on curbing plastics and illegal fishing in our seas. Nearly 200 countries came together in Nice, France…
Dust storms on Mars are electric MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Alamy Electrified whirlwinds on Mars can produce lightning-like discharges, which could pose a threat to the rovers trundling around on the Red Planet’s surface. Severe weather on Mars can sometimes create dust devils, whirlwinds of Martian soil that spin for a few minutes before vanishing. Dust…
The Bright Angel area where an intriguing Martian rock was discovered NASA/JPL-Caltech Scientists are narrowing down explanations for a potential chemical sign of ancient life on Mars. This sign – marks found on Martian rocks last year – could have been caused by microbes or by a reaction that takes place only at high temperatures….
Paul Souders/Getty Images Lonesome George, the last of the Pinta Island tortoises, died in 2012, leaving no offspring. His solitude was imposed upon him by humans who killed the rest of his species and brought goats to his island in the Galapagos, destroying their habitat. But Lonesome George probably didn’t much mind being on his…
A new image of the cosmic microwave background radiation for part of the sky – the zoomed in area is about 20 times the width of the moon as seen from Earth ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration Our latest and best ever map of the early universe is five times more detailed than anything we have…
©The British Library Board It has been a sunny spring in London, the perfect time to explore the overlap between gardening and science in the Avanade Intelligent Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which closed on 24 May. Each tree in this urban forest sported an arboreal “smartwatch”, which tracked its growth, lean angle and…
BBC As a Ryanair flight from London approached Vilnius, Lithuania, on 17 January, its descent was suddenly aborted. Just minutes from touching down, the aircraft’s essential Global Positioning System (GPS) suffered an unexplained interference, triggering an emergency diversion. The Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 had already descended to around 850ft (259m) when the disruption occurred. Instead…
A common dolphin stranded on a UK beach Waves & Wellies Photography Dolphins in seas around the UK are dying from a combination of increased water temperatures and toxic chemicals that the UK banned in the 1980s. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a long-lasting type of persistent chemical pollutant, once widely used in industrial manufacturing. They…
The NWA 15915 meteorite was discovered in 2023 Steve Jurvetson/CC BY 2.0 Misfit meteorites that don’t fit neatly into known categories could be relics from a lost Mercury-like world that was destroyed early in the history of the solar system. Most asteroids that fall to Earth as meteorites can be grouped together and have common…
Pacific compass jellyfish (Chrysaora fuscescens) Heidi & Hans-Jürgen Koch These eerily beautiful images show animals born at Europe’s largest jelly-fish breeding facility: Jellyfish Farm, in Künzell, Germany – hundreds of kilometres from any ocean. Photographers Heidi and Hans-Jürgen Koch used macro lenses and studio flashes to capture the images, but they were most concerned with…
