Imagine watching a thunderstorm at night when, for a fraction of a second, an enormous red shape flashes above the clouds. It resembles a glowing jellyfish or a tree made of crimson light. This is not science fiction. It is a red sprite, one of the most spectacular and elusive …
In 1998, researchers tried something that sounded more like waste disposal than forest restoration. About 12,000 tonnes of processed orange peels and pulp were spread across a three-hectare patch of severely degraded cattle pasture in northwestern Costa Rica. Sixteen years later, the area looked dramatically different. The pasture had been …
Imagine placing an umbrella over a coral reef not to keep it dry, but to protect it from sunlight. It sounds strange, yet scientists are testing exactly this idea as coral reefs face increasingly severe marine heatwaves and bleaching events. When ocean temperatures become unusually high, corals can expel the …
Coconut shells are usually treated as agricultural waste. But after a little chemical transformation, they could become part of something we drive on every day: asphalt. Researchers have found that turning coconut shells into biochar and adding it to asphalt can make the material stiffer, stronger and more resistant to …
Thousands of metres beneath the Atlantic Ocean, where sunlight never reaches and pressure is immense, scientists found something that sounds almost impossible: 57 species that had never been scientifically identified before. The discoveries came from Argentina’s Mar del Plata Submarine Canyon, a vast underwater valley more than 3,500 metres deep. …
A 3D printer is usually associated with making objects, not cleaning water. But researchers have now used one to create a filter that can remove up to 90% of microplastics from flowing water. The challenge with microplastics is their size. These plastic fragments are smaller than 5 millimetres, and some …
A tsunami can destroy coastlines, reshape rivers and create entirely new habitats. But in Japan, the 2011 disaster also triggered something much less visible: two fish species that normally lived apart suddenly began exchanging genes. The surprising part came years later. Researchers tracking the fish found that although the tsunami-triggered …
A drop of brackish water from a North Carolina marsh contained something scientists had never seen before: two previously unknown species of microscopic amoebae. The organisms belong to a rare genus called Paulinella. Unlike the amoebae most people picture as shapeless cells that crawl around and engulf food, these tiny …
The tropical Pacific Ocean is heating up—and scientists are watching closely. In 2026, a rapidly strengthening El Niño is developing across the central and eastern Pacific, with forecasts suggesting it could become one of the strongest events observed in the modern record. Although the term “Super El Niño” is widely …
We rarely think about Earth’s magnetic field because it is invisible and constantly surrounding us. But what if our cells have been responding to it all along? A new study suggests that Earth’s magnetic field may interact with some of the most fundamental processes inside living organisms. When researchers almost …
On 26th August, a glacier collapse in the Himalayas sent a flood down Nepal’s Trishuli valley. Nepal’s disaster agency had counted 1,003 deaths at the time of that report, with 3,916 people still missing. Scientists told Reuters and the BBC that climate change likely helped trigger the collapse. The obvious …
More than 12 trillion tons of ice have disappeared from Greenland and Antarctica since 1979. That sounds like an enormous amount of melting, but new satellite data reveals that much of the ice did not simply melt away at the surface. Instead, glaciers have been moving faster and carrying more …
Plants cannot run away from insects, pathogens or environmental threats. Instead, they have evolved an extraordinary chemical arsenal. Among these molecules are compounds capable of interfering with cell division, damaging DNA, altering metabolism and triggering programmed cell death. Remarkably, some of these same properties make certain plant molecules useful against …
For decades, Lake Mead stood as a shimmering oasis in the heart of the Mojave Desert, a testament to 20th -century engineering that fueled the rise of the American Southwest. Today, it stands as a stark monument to a rapidly changing climate. By late 2026, the reservoir dropped to historic …
Plastic bottles and other single-use plastics usually have a short life. They may be used for minutes, but the material itself can remain in the environment for decades or longer. Researchers at MIT have been working on a very different destination for that waste: the structure of a building. Their …
There is water floating around you right now, even if the air feels completely dry. The problem is finding a practical way to capture it. Researchers in China have developed a wood-based material that can pull moisture from air with relative humidity as low as 15%. In outdoor observation, a …
Imagine walking deep inside a mountain and suddenly looking up at a forest growing beneath you. Above the trees, clouds drift through a cavern hundreds of feet high, while a river flows along the cave floor. This isn’t a fantasy landscape. It is Hang Son Doong, a giant cave in …
What happens when the waste left behind after making olive oil is put back into the soil? Scientists in Italy spent eight years testing exactly that. In an olive orchard near Assisi, researchers repeatedly added olive pomace, the solid residue left behind after olives are processed for oil, to some …
The universe is expanding and that expansion is accelerating. For more than two decades, scientists have explained this acceleration using dark energy, a mysterious component thought to make up roughly 70% of the cosmos. The simplest explanation is that dark energy is a constant property of space itself. But new observations …
What if one of the simplest ways to reduce earthquake damage involved nothing more complicated than a metal cylinder packed with steel balls? Researchers at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates have developed a passive seismic damping device designed to reduce vibrations travelling through buildings, bridges and …
What would you expect a bridge made from recycled plastic to look like? In 2011, a 90-foot-long road bridge arrived in Scotland in just six sections. It had been manufactured in the United States and shipped across the Atlantic before being assembled over the River Tweed near Edinburgh. The entire …
What makes a forest successful? Is it the number of tonnes of carbon it can lock away, or the number of species it can support? A 21-year experiment in Denmark suggests that the answer depends on what we are trying to achieve. Scientists comparing forests established on former farmland found …
From empty fishing nets in Peru to early wildfires in Indonesia, the strongest El Niño in decades is throwing its weight around. Scientists say the rulebook written by past events may no longer apply. Off the coast of Peru, the sea usually gives generously. Those waters are among the most …
What if an island could act like a giant electrical switchboard? That is the idea behind Princess Elisabeth Island, an artificial island being built about 45 kilometres off the Belgian coast in the North Sea. It is being designed to collect electricity from offshore wind farms and send that power …
What would you normally do with 20,000 old car tyres? In Maine, engineers found a surprisingly useful place for them: under a road. The unusual experiment was designed to solve two problems at once. Maine’s roads have to survive repeated freezing and thawing, which can leave gravel roads muddy, soft …
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