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…
As humans dream of venturing to other planets and creating a virtual world with the help of AI, the hand that was holding tight with the past seems to be losing its grip. In the race to develop the future, the rich depths of the past are getting lost. Those that define our origins, reveal…
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…
Australia’s renewable energy boom has reached a remarkable milestone. The country now generates so much electricity from rooftop solar panels that, during the middle of the day, wholesale power prices frequently fall to zero or even below zero. Instead of allowing surplus electricity to go to waste, eligible households in parts of Australia can now…
Electricity generation from hydroelectric projects declined nearly 21%. (AI image) El Nino and the resultant weak monsoon has had an impact on India’s hydropower output, which has dropped by more than 20% in June. The dry weather, which is associated with El Nino, has meant that the water levels in reservoirs have gone down. This…
