Science

Strange Spheres Washed Ashore on an Australian Beach. Authorities Say They’re Probably ‘Space Balls’ What began as an ordinary day in a small Australian beach town turned into an unusual investigation after six large metallic spheres washed ashore. The discovery forced residents to evacuate and raised fears that the objects could be dangerous.The shiny objects…

Innovation often begins with solving problems that others consider impossible. For Dr Robert Sola Okojie, a Nigerian-born engineer and inventor, that pursuit has led to a career spanning more than two decades at Nasa and groundbreaking contributions to space technology. After 21 years at Nasa and securing 21 US patents, he was inducted into the…

Scientists have long relied on chemical traces locked inside ancient rocks to piece together the story of early life. Fossils from the deepest reaches of Earth’s history are rare, often fragmentary and difficult to interpret. Isotopes, by contrast, can survive for billions of years. Among the most informative are those linked to nitrogen, an element…

From hundreds of kilometres above Earth, a national celebration looked very different. While crowds gathered across the United States for the country’s 250th anniversary, astronauts aboard the International Space Station watched the evening lights spread across the planet below. On July 4, as fireworks filled the skies over Los Angeles, the display became part of…

Far beyond Pluto, where sunlight is faint and temperatures remain extremely low, countless icy bodies drift through the outer reaches of the Solar System. These distant objects, known as trans-Neptunian objects, have long been viewed as frozen relics left over from the Solar System’s formation. Most are thought to be too small to hold onto…

Most years, skywatchers have to wait patiently for different celestial events to arrive one at a time. An eclipse might dominate one month, while a meteor shower steals attention weeks later. This August, however, the calendar has produced a rare overlap. On 12 August 2026, a solar eclipse will unfold across parts of the Northern…

The Cambridge team behind the living algae-powered bio-battery: Lucia Giron, Dr Paolo Bombelli and Professor Chris Howe. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a living bio-battery that generates electricity continuously using photosynthetic algae, offering a potential alternative to millions of disposable batteries used in everyday electronics. Unlike conventional batteries that gradually run out…

For decades, scientists believed the world’s tallest trees faced a fundamental disadvantage during drought. The higher a tree grows, the harder gravity makes it for water to travel from the roots to the leaves, leading researchers to assume that towering rainforest giants would be especially vulnerable as the climate becomes hotter and drier. A new…

Some of the world’s most advanced robots are preparing for an extraordinary expedition to one of the planet’s most dangerous environments. Beginning this July, a fleet of autonomous drones, robotic boats, underwater vehicles and intelligent sensors will travel to Greenland to investigate how its glaciers are melting where they meet the ocean. The mission, known…

For decades, astronomers have searched for the birthplace of globular clusters, the dense spherical collections of stars that orbit galaxies today. These ancient systems are among the oldest visible structures in the Universe, yet their earliest history remains surprisingly difficult to reconstruct. Most theories have focused on crowded regions inside young galaxies, where gas was…