Helen Briggs BBC environment correspondent•@hbriggs Getty Images Clownfish are one of the most recognisable reef fish, known for their orange and white stripes Fish similar to those made famous by the movie Finding Nemo are shrinking to cope with marine heatwaves, a study has found. The research recorded clownfish living on coral reefs slimmed down…
Normal potatoes like these turn brown when they are sliced open Formatoriginal / Alamy The potatoes I am eating are nice, but they don’t stand out taste-wise. To find out what is special about them, you need to cut open the raw tubers and keep an eye on them. What you will see is, er,…
Georgina Rannard Climate and science reporter Getty Images Temperatures in the seas around the UK and Ireland have soared in the past week with some areas now 4C warmer than normal, with potential implications for marine life and people going swimming. The heatwave is most intense off the west coast of Ireland as well as…
A new study from Toho University reveals that female earwigs exhibit a similar pattern of exaggerated forceps growth as males, suggesting that both sexes may have evolved these traits through sexual selection. Do larger male elk have proportionally larger antlers? The answer is no. In fact, larger individuals tend to have disproportionately larger antlers —…
An artist’s impression of Earth in the Archaean Eon, 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago CHRISTIAN JEGOU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Mysterious microbes living in wetlands in China have helped to narrow down when the ancestor of all animals and plants lived – and the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere may have played a key role in…
Real aliens may not be so obvious, if we ever find them Naeblys/Alamy If you’re the kind of person who keeps an eye on astronomical news – or glances at any news site – you may have seen a story about hints of a sign of alien life on an exoplanet called K2-18b. The claim…
Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s CODEX (Coronal Diagnostic Experiment) investigation have successfully evaluated the instrument’s first images, revealing the speed and temperature of material flowing out from the Sun. These images, shared at a press event Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, illustrate the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is not…
Mark Poynting Climate reporter, BBC News Noaa/Reuters Hurricane Milton, in October 2024, was one of the Atlantic’s strongest recorded storms The coming Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be busier than usual, US science agency NOAA has warned, just as cuts to American research are raising fears about the ability to track and prepare for…
Superb starlings take an unusual approach to co-parenting Grahame Cornforth / Alamy Stock Photo They say it takes a village to raise a child; for these birds, it is no different. Superb starlings not only help raise other starlings’ chicks, but they also switch between the roles of “parent” and “nanny” multiple times throughout their…
An artist’s impression of gas and dust around the massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy SDSS1335+0728 ESO/M. Kornmesser Strange X-ray pulses blasted out from a recently awakened monster black hole are the most powerful astronomers have seen, and may help explain how these cosmic behemoths emerge from their slumber. A few years…
