Geoff Maskell BBC News NI weather presenter BBC Armagh Observatory holds weather records dating back to 1795 Armagh Observatory is marking a very special meteorological milestone as the institute celebrates 230 years of continuous weather observation. The unbroken tradition of handwritten data makes it the longest sequence of continuous weather information gathered anywhere in the…
PA Media Many parts of the UK are in the throes of their third heatwave The UK is breaking heat and rainfall records increasingly frequently as its climate continues to warm, the Met Office has warned. The country’s changing weather patterns mean the UK now experiences a “notably different” climate to what it was just…
A 2.35-billion-year-old meteorite with a unique chemical signature, found in Africa in 2023, plugs a major gap in our understanding of the Moon’s volcanic history. Findings from analyses of the Northwest Africa 16286 meteorite, presented at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague, offer fresh insights into how the Moon’s interior evolved, highlighting the long-lived nature of its volcanic…
A new kind of cosmic object could help solve one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter. Particle Astrophysicists have proposed the existence of a strange new type of star-like object, called a ‘dark dwarf’, which may be quietly glowing in the center of our galaxy. Far from being dark in appearance, these unusual objects…
When the first Neanderthal bones were uncovered in 1856, they sparked a flood of questions about these mysterious ancient humans. Were they similar to us or fundamentally different? Did our ancestors cooperate with them, clash with them, or even form relationships? The discovery of the Denisovans, a group closely related to Neanderthals that once lived…
Mark Poynting and Erwan Rivault BBC Climate & Data teams Getty Images Shading from the midday Sun during a recent heatwave in southern France Warmer water at the seaside might sound appealing for your holiday dip, but a recent ocean heatwave in the Mediterranean Sea has been so intense scientists fear potentially devastating consequences for…
New research into the anatomy of blue sharks (Prionace glauca) reveals a unique nanostructure in their skin that produces their iconic blue coloration, but intriguingly, also suggests a potential capacity for color change. “Blue is one of the rarest colors in the animal kingdom, and animals have developed a variety of unique strategies through evolution…
A research team led by Eske Willerslev, professor at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge, has recovered ancient DNA from 214 known human pathogens in prehistoric humans from Eurasia. The study shows, among other things, that the earliest known evidence of zoonotic diseases — illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, like COVID…
The future of sustained space habitation depends on our ability to grow fresh food away from Earth. The revolutionary new collaborative Moon-Rice project is using cutting-edge experimental biology to create an ideal future food crop that can be grown in future deep-space outposts, as well as in extreme environments back on Earth. Modern space exploration…
A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen – possibly predating our solar system by more than three billion years, researchers say. The “water ice-rich” visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood and the…
