Sir William Osler (Image: Wikipedia) History is full of people who thought of something brilliant first and got none of the credit for it. Someone else came along later, explained the idea more clearly, pushed it harder, and won the fame. It feels unfair, and in a way it is. But it is also how…
The National Science Foundation on Thursday reversed a decision to dismantle a sprawling ocean monitoring network after vigorous objections from Democratic lawmakers and scientists who rely on it to track everything from ocean circulation to extreme weather.The NSF issued a statement saying that it “appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders” and would…
Galileo Galilei (Image: Wikipedia) Most of us meet mathematics as a school subject, a pile of sums and rules to survive before the bell rings. Galileo Galilei saw something else entirely. To him, maths was not a chore invented to torment teenagers. It was the secret code the whole universe is written in, the alphabet…
For years, a meteorite lay in the deserts of north-west Africa, seemingly no different from countless other rocks scattered across the landscape. Yet hidden inside it was a record of one of the Moon’s most violent eras, a geological story that had remained untold for more than three billion years.The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa…
Barbara McClintock (Image: Wikipedia) Imagine making a discovery so far ahead of everyone else that the experts in your own field simply do not believe you. They shrug, they look away, some of them quietly decide you have lost the thread. Most people would crumble, or at least back down. Barbara McClintock did neither. She…
When interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile on July 1, 2025, it quickly attracted attention for more than just being the third known object from outside the Solar System. Some researchers, including Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, argued that several unusual features were intriguing enough to keep the possibility of…
There is something quietly circular about the sight of yesterday’s lunch becoming tomorrow’s stationery. In Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture, where bowls of thick Sanuki udon are part of the local identity, unwanted noodles are being given a second life that few would have predicted. Instead of heading for disposal, surplus udon is being turned into thin…
At the bottom of a lake in Mexico City lives a creature that should not, by biological rules, be able to do what it does. Cut off one of its legs, and a new one grows back. Damage its spinal cord, heart, or even part of its brain, and the tissue regenerates with no scarring…
A casual lunch between friends in the late 1970s left behind one of physics’ quirkiest unsolved puzzles. Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, while dining with his friend Ralph Leighton at a Thai restaurant in Glendale, California, watched Leighton agonise over whether to order his favourite ginger chicken again or risk trying something new from the menu….
A growing population and finite phosphorus reserves have made efficient nutrient management one of the biggest challenges facing modern agriculture. Scientists have now uncovered new details about a little-known form of phosphorus hidden within living soil microbes. The findings, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, come from an international team of researchers…