Last year, the ocean absorbed a record amount of heat. This is equivalent to detonating 12 Hiroshima bombs every second.
The ocean absorbed more heat last year than in any year since modern measurements began around 1960, according to a new analysis published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science. The world’s oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere due to greenhouse gas emissions. As heat accumulates in […]
Traces leaked into Renaissance textbooks, recipe revealed to “cure” diseases using lizard heads and human feces
European folk healers in the 16th century left their manuals smeared with ingredients and fingerprints as they developed treatments for minor illnesses. Researchers are now studying the chemical traces left behind by Renaissance people to understand how they experimented with new treatments. Two German medical books, How to Cure and Eliminate All Sufferings and Diseases […]
Nebula Sky Disk: The world’s oldest depiction of an astronomical phenomenon — and it may depict the Pleiades star cluster
simple facts Name: Nebula Sky Disc What is it: Bronze disc with gold accents Birthplace: Nebra, Germany Created: From around 1800 BC to around 1600 BC The Nebula Sky Disc was discovered in 1999 among a pile of artifacts that metal detectors illegally excavated from an ancient religious site in the hills near Nebula, a […]
James Webb Telescope reveals clearest look yet at black hole’s edge – and it could solve major galactic mysteries
Astronomers have revealed the clearest images yet of the area around a black hole from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This spectacular view could help solve a decades-old mystery, overturning long-held beliefs about the universe’s most extreme objects. Since the 1990s, astronomers have observed interesting brightness in infrared wavelengths around active supermassive black holes […]
Astronomers have identified the oldest Milky Way-like galaxy in the universe, just 2 billion years after the Big Bang
Scientists continue to push the boundaries of astronomy and cosmology thanks to next-generation instruments that can see further and more clearly than ever before. Through these efforts, astronomers have observed some of the earliest galaxies in the universe. This, in turn, led to the refinement of theories and chronology of galaxy formation and evolution. In […]
Viruses evolved on the space station and sent back to Earth were highly effective at killing bacteria
Bacteria and the viruses that infect them, called phages, are engaged in an evolutionary arms race. But when combat takes place in microgravity, its evolution follows a different trajectory, a study conducted on the International Space Station (ISS) has found. As bacteria and phages wage war, bacteria evolve better defenses to survive, while phages evolve […]
Why is this year’s influenza epidemic so bad?
If you feel like everyone around you has the flu, it’s not your imagination. As of January 9, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that at least 15 million people have contracted the flu this season. Of these, 180,000 people have been hospitalized and 7,400 people have died from the flu, including […]
How ancient Romans managed their wealth (and didn’t just hide their savings)
“All I desire is an income of 20,000 sesterces from a safe investment,” declares a character in a poem by the Roman poet Juvenal (1st-2nd century AD). Today, 20,000 sesterces are approximately [Australian] Interest from investment is $300,000. Anyone would be happy with this much passive annual income. Just like today, ancient people understood that […]
NASA launches Pandora telescope to take JWST’s search for habitable worlds to a new level
On January 11, 2026, I watched anxiously at California’s tightly controlled Vandenberg Space Force Base as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted NASA’s new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit. Exoplanets are worlds orbiting other stars. From Earth, they are very difficult to observe because they appear as very dark spots right next to their […]
Strange discovery reveals ‘missing link’ in planet formation: ‘This fundamentally changes the way we think about planetary systems’
Astronomers have gotten a rare glimpse of four baby planets in the process of growing. And something surprising was revealed. It’s that these toddlers’ worlds are getting brighter with age. The quadruplets orbit in a tightly packed orbit around the young star V1298 Tau, which is only 20 million years old (compared to the Sun’s […]