December 11, 20245 min readA Quiet Bias Is Keeping Black Scientists from Winning Nobel PrizesThe way scientists recognize one another’s work overlooks the seminal contributions of Black scientists. The Nobel Committees need to recognize how this excludes Black scientists from...
Scientists have long known that humans outside of Africa owe 2 to 3 percent of their genome to Neandertal ancestors. But now, using the oldest modern human DNA ever analyzed, two separate studies have traced this ancestry to a single...
Unidentified drones have been flying over US military sitesU.S. Navy/Ensign Drew Verbis Mysterious drones have been swarming the night skies above New Jersey and other nearby states for a month. They’ve been spotted over several US military sites. They’ve been...
Illustration of modern humans who lived in Europe about 45,000 years agoTom Björklund Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred over a sustained period of around 7000 years, probably in the eastern Mediterranean. That is according to two studies that trace how...
This relatively small solar flare from October – the bright flash in the centre spotted by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – would be dwarfed by a superflareNASA/SDO The sun may produce extremely powerful bursts of radiation more frequently than we...
Saharan dust storms like this one in Athens, Greece (above), are becoming more commonReuters/Louisa Gouliamaki It won’t be confirmed until January, but it is now almost certain that 2024 will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record. Even more...
A question that many people are still trying to answerKrisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images Did artificial intelligence begin to plateau in 2024, following a boom year in 2023? It depends on who you ask. Some say AI models that were...
All over the northern hemisphere, millions of animals are tucked up somewhere safe, hibernating through the cold, ready to come up smiling in spring. Bats, marmots, hedgehogs, bears. And not just in the wintry north: animals in the tropics do...
A climate protestor with a sign referencing the film Don’t Look UpVuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Alamy Writing about the environment can be depressing and repetitive, and I am relieved that I have been able to take a break from it this...
This year, both the UK and US had major elections where the governing party lost in a big way. At moments like this, we usually focus on what these kinds of shifts will mean, if anything, for everyday life. Less...
