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They may not have the muscles and reflexes of the animal kingdom, but that doesn’t mean plants just passively sit around when something starts chewing them up. We know damage triggers a signal that spreads through the plant, mounting its …
The most significant pterosaur fossil ever discovered in Australia has been unearthed in the Winton area of central western Queensland. The newly discovered species, which my colleagues and I have named Ferrodraco lentoni, had a wingspan of about 4 metres …
A new study comparing human skulls with those of other animals claims that the dimensions of our heads appear to follow the golden ratio – that special number with a controversial reputation for being the “formula for beauty”. Usually symbolised …
According to local news reports in Chile, something was seen blazing a trail across the sky over the island of Chiloé last Wednesday. Naturally, with several small fires appearing soon after the sightings, some residents concluded the two events were linked. But experts …
In April, an international team of scientists captured the first-ever photo of a black hole. In September, they won a US$3 million Breakthrough Prize for that accomplishment. But they’re far from finished. Next, the team behind the Event Horizon Telescope …
The centre of the Milky Way galaxy is a relatively calm place now (compared to other galactic centres), but that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, just 3.5 million years ago, it was positively riotous – expelling a burst …
You might be familiar with the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, where the eponymous feline in a box can be both alive or dead at the same time, often used to illustrate the multi-state paradox of quantum mechanics. Well, now scientists …
We know that our planet has experienced warmer periods in the past, during the Pliocene geological epoch around three million years ago. Our research, published today, shows that up to one third of Antarctica’s ice sheet melted during this period, …
Just less than 13,000 years ago, the climate cooled for a short while in many parts of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere. We know this because of what has been found in ice cores drilled in Greenland, as …
In a death-defying maneuver for the spacecraft, NASA’s Juno has completed an unprecedented and unplanned engine burn. The purpose? To save the spacecraft’s ‘life’, or at least the rest of its mission to Jupiter. Jupiter casts a deep, dark shadow. …