Science

Quote of the day by Isaac Newton (Image source: Wikipedia) Isaac Newton’s quote captures a genuinely striking contrast between the predictability of nature and the real complexity of human behaviour. “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people,” he is said to have remarked. Newton devoted much of his…

Woodland standing in Epping Forest, south of High Beach, England. Image Credit: Wikipedia Britain has been planting new woodland on former farmland, but a 25-year study found that these new woods can take much longer to develop like ancient woodland. Researchers studied an old farmland site and found that its soil and plants were still…

Discarded fruit peels could help recover valuable materials from used lithium-ion batteries at a pilot recycling plant in Singapore. Researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) developed a process that uses waste from oranges, lemons and pineapples to dissolve battery material and extract metals needed for new batteries. The facility, operating near Pioneer since late 2022,…

The idea that a single person could move something as enormous as Earth sounds impossible at first. More than two thousand years ago, however, Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes used the image to demonstrate the extraordinary power of a simple mechanical principle. The statement “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move…

Britain’s summer is missing one of its most familiar insects. Wasps that usually gather around outdoor food, patrol gardens and become increasingly noticeable in late summer appear unusually scarce in 2026. The shortage has become so pronounced that researchers are struggling to collect enough insects for laboratory experiments, while the few wasps being seen appear…

A mouse-sized bat that lives for decades appears to have evolved some of the same biological protections that help it resist cancer and viral disease. Researchers comparing eight closely related Myotis species found an extraordinary range of lifespans, from about seven years in some species to nearly 50 years in others. Their genome analysis revealed…

David DeMar Jr., a researcher with the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, discovered the unusual nodule while conducting fieldwork in northeastern Montana’s Hell Creek Formation. Sometimes, the most extraordinary discoveries are hiding in things that look utterly ordinary. In 2016, a researcher working in Montana spotted a small, reddish-brown rock while searching for fossils. It…

Train movement produces vibrations along railway tracks, much of which is normally lost to the surrounding environment. Researchers have developed a system that captures some of this wasted energy from heavy-duty freight railway tracks and converts it into electricity. The study, published in ‘Applied Energy‘, describes a vibration energy harvesting system that uses the irregular…

Diamondback moth. Image Credit: Wikipedia Diamondback moths exposed to repeated heat for 3 years evolved traits that helped their descendants develop faster and survive extreme temperatures better. A 2026 study titled ‘Experimental evolution to thermal stress indicates climate resilience in a cosmopolitan arthropod’ tested moth populations under different temperatures for dozens of generations. It was…

Image Credit: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Japan sent rice and koji to the International Space Station in 2025 to test whether sake could be brewed beyond Earth. As part of the DASSAI MOON Project, the ingredients were placed inside Japan’s Kibo module under conditions designed to reproduce the Moon’s gravity. After fermentation, the material was frozen…