PC: Guinness World Records In 1986, Ann Bancroft set out across the Arctic as a 29-year-old elementary school teacher with a love of the outdoors and a place on an eight-member expedition. Fifty-five days later, she stood at the North Pole, becoming the first woman to reach it. The journey involved dog sleds, tonnes of … Read more
Ornithoptera priamus. Image Credit: Robert Nash/Curator of Entomology Ulster Museum/Wikipedia Butterfly wings could offer a unique solution to one of the biggest problems faced by solar panels, which is ‘sunlight that bounces away before it can be used.’ A study published in ‘Solar Energy’ explored how the tiny structures found on the black scales of … Read more
Detail of the main Huashan Rock art. Image Credit: Rolfmueller/Wikipedia Ancient paintings covering limestone cliffs in southern China may owe their remarkable survival to an unexpected ingredient known as ‘blood.’ A new study of the ‘Huashan rock art’ in Guangxi published in the ‘Journal of Archaeological Science’ suggests that the artists used a mixture containing … Read more
Hawaii’s native Hawaiian stilt, known as aeʻo, has made a remarkable recovery after decades of population decline pushed the bird to roughly 200 individuals in the 1940s. Habitat loss, hunting and introduced predators had severely affected the long-legged wetland bird. More than five decades of legal protection, wetland restoration, predator control and monitoring have since … Read more
Nasa just invited India to help build a permanent base on the Moon. It’s the kind of headline that writes itself — and yet, what it actually means for India is still almost entirely undecided.Nasa wants to do something considerably more ambitious than return astronauts to the Moon. It wants to start building a place … Read more
Fan built her own $200 device instead of using NASA’s $50,000 clinostat. (Society for science photo) Leanne Fan, an 18-year-old student from San Diego, has been named a finalist in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search for her research into wound healing in space. Her project looks at whether red light therapy can help wounds … Read more
Researchers in Michigan have helped bring the Poweshiek skipperling butterfly back from the brink of extinction after its US wild population fell to just nine in 2022. Through captive breeding, habitat restoration and carefully planned releases, more than 1,300 butterflies were released in 2025. The recovery effort has now expanded to other endangered butterflies, while … Read more
After commercial whaling nearly erased them, blue and fin whales are slowly reclaiming the southeast Atlantic Commercial whaling killed an estimated 350,000 blue whales and 725,000 fin whales during the 20th century. More than 40 years after commercial whaling ended, however, the two largest whale species are slowly returning to parts of their former range … Read more
In 1987, a British naturalist became the first professional warden of a remote Seychelles island In 1987, British naturalist Ian Bullock arrived on remote Aride Island in the Seychelles to become its first professional warden. Just one year later, the groundwork he established helped make possible an important conservation project: 29 endangered Seychelles warblers were … Read more
Solar Panel Waste: The Unknown Side of Solar Power Discarded solar panels could become a major global waste problem, with as much as 402 million tonnes of photovoltaic (PV) waste expected by 2060. But if these panels are recycled properly, the materials inside them could create almost $1 trillion (£770 billion) in economic value.According to … Read more