The desert-like climate 3,500m up in Ladakh, India, is extreme: the winters are long and bitterly cold, and in summer, water is scarce. Farmers rely on glacial meltwater during the April and May planting season. But, with the retreat of the glaciers due to climate change, there’s less of that when they need it. Teacher …
Just two hours away from London is another International Dark Sky Park, as the South Downs were awarded this prestigious status (which applies to just 12 places in the world) last year. The Moore Reserve, named after the British astronomer Patrick Moore, is a great place to get started in astronomy, especially during this month’s …
The Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, Electricity: The Spark of Life, features both an early electric eel specimen and an engraving depicting Humboldt’s legendary brush with live versions. The exhibition examines our relationship with one of the most potent symbols of the modern world, from early understanding through to generation, supply and consumption – and traces …
1. Southern rockhopper penguins mate for life despite living hundreds of kilometres apart most of the time. Using GPS trackers, scientists know that their mating season lasts less than a month. Yet, year after year, they somehow manage to find each other in order to mate with the same partner. 2. Many birds go to …
How do you find your dinner if you live underground and can’t see anything? You sniff it out. Like the mole that uses scent to find its prey, tiny single-celled organisms called protists have been found to target their desired meal – soil bacteria – using scent. Ecologists have long known that soil bacteria emit …
You’d be forgiven for mistaking this cascade of red for volcanic lava. But it is actually the wet stuff – a waterfall transformed into a ‘firefall’, one of nature’s rarest phenomena. It’s a spectacle you might get the chance to see at the 300m Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park, California, on just a few …
The plains of the southern Serengeti become a giant maternity ward in February, as wildebeest calves are born in their thousands. Around 8,000 calves come into the world each day – making a total of about 300,000 over the calving season. Wildebeest – also called gnu or wildebai – band together in herds tens of …
The mirror-like Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat, is almost indistinguishable from the horizon above it at this time of year. You could probably see your face in it. The 12,000sq km salt-encrusted prehistoric lakebed is located in Potosi, southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, 3,660m above sea level. It is …
In southwest France, you can have a stargazing experience like no other, and stay overnight in an observatory on a mountain peak. Perched 2,877m above sea level in the Pyrenees, the Pic du Midi de Bigorre observatory is open for both day trips and exciting overnight stays. Plus, this year sees the launch of its …
Artificial intelligence is developing at a rapid pace and so-called ‘emotional robots’, such as Pepper in Japan, are now on the market and designed to live with humans. Pepper is said to feel ‘joy, surprise, anger, doubt and sadness’. But are robot feelings real enough for humans to build meaningful relationships with them? Currently, these …
Feel like you were taller last time you checked? You’re not imagining it: we do actually shrink during the day as the cartilage in our spine compresses, making us 1½-2cm shorter. Thankfully, as we sleep, the pressure on our spine eases and we regain the lost height in the morning. However, over time the effects …
The rear part of our brain gets really active during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the stage when we are close to waking and when we dream the most. But dreams can also occur during so-called ‘slow-wave sleep’. And, although scientists have been studying the dream cycle for decades, no one really knows for sure …
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the banana is about as far away from a human being as you can get. Yet we actually share 60 per cent of the same DNA. In fact, if you could peer through the lens of a microscope at the genes that make up human DNA, you would be …
The Australian quokka, part of the kangaroo family, is the happiest animal on earth. At least, that’s how it appears. Once described by a Dutch sea captain as ‘a kind of rat as big as a common cat’, the furry creatures always wear a cheeky grin – even when asleep… Scientists still don’t understand why …
It’s official: optimists may live longer than pessimists. Of the 70,000 women who were monitored as part of an eight-year study by Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, those who had a positive reaction to setbacks were 52 per cent less likely to die from infection, 39 per cent less likely to die of …
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