Science

7,000-year-old fish traps show hunter-gatherers brought fish to Norway’s mountains centuries before farming Ancient hunter-gatherers carried live brown trout past steep waterfalls to stock empty mountain lakes in Norway 7,000 years ago, creating managed fisheries whose descendants are still being caught by local anglers today.Archaeologists at the University of Oslo discovered well-preserved wooden fish traps…

We live in a world where everything, from the blood running in our veins to the oceans spanning our planet, is polluted by plastic in one way or the other. We see mountains of plastic rubbish growing day-by-day. We are currently facing a massive environmental crisis as humanity produces over 460 million tonnes of plastic…

Artificial intelligence has transformed wildlife photography, allowing people to sharpen blurry images, remove distracting branches and enhance colours with just a few clicks. But scientists now say these seemingly harmless edits could have unintended consequences far beyond social media. A new commentary published in Nature Ecology & Evolution warns that AI-enhanced bird photographs are beginning…

On a cold November morning in 1957, a small stray dog that had wandered the streets of Moscow became part of one of the defining moments of the early Space Age. Her name was Laika. She was placed inside Sputnik 2, a spacecraft built in haste after the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik just…

Sending humans to Mars is one of Nasa’s greatest ambitions, but the journey presents enormous challenges. A round trip could take well over a year, exposing astronauts to dangerous cosmic radiation, muscle and bone loss caused by microgravity, psychological stress and the need to carry vast amounts of food, water and supplies. To tackle these…

A new University at Buffalo study has found that smoke from Canadian wildfires may have made many bird species harder to spot in New York State during the 2021–2023 breeding seasons. Researchers linked higher levels of wildfire-related PM2.5 air pollution with fewer sightings of 40 bird species. They say the birds may have changed their…

For decades, scientists have known that the Ontong Java Plateau, the world’s largest oceanic plateau, was created by an extraordinary burst of volcanic activity more than 100 million years ago. What remained uncertain was how enormous volumes of magma travelled through the Earth’s lithosphere during that event. According to the study published in Advancing Earth…

Cyanobacteria, a blue-green algae is known to have played an ancient role in establishing Earth’s atmosphere. They love warm temperatures, lots of sunlight and slow-moving water. Florida’s year-round climate provides all of this and more. When rivers, lakes and estuaries are loaded with excess nitrogen and phosphorus, often due to agricultural runoff and improperly treated…

In 1970, Soviet scientists began drilling into the ground on the Kola Peninsula in the far northwest of the country, hoping to reach deeper into the earth than anyone before them. Almost two decades later, in 1989, the project hit its final depth of 12,262 metres, making it the deepest vertical borehole ever created by…

Bryan Johnson is a longevity influencer who claims to have spent millions of dollars tracking and streamlining nearly every aspect of his biology in order to slow down or reverse ageing. At 48, he is undeniably fit, sleeps more than 8 hours and has a fertile age, or so he claims.Over the years, he has…