Science

A former NASA engineer claims he has found a way to overcome Earth’s gravity, and all ears have perked up. Exodus Propulsion Technologies, a private company co-founded by Charles Buhler, an electrostatics specialist has made the claim, according to a report by Popular Mechanics. With Buhler having worked for NASA and Kennedy Space Centre, his…

A diver in a kelp forest off the coast of California. Image Credit: Ed Bierman/Wikipedia A school-led restoration project in Orange County, California, has helped bring back kelp forests while turning thousands of students into active participants in marine conservation. Since 2009, the organisation ‘Get Inspired’ has involved schools and volunteer scuba divers in efforts…

In an experiment, scientists shook living earthworms at high frequencies to see how their flexible bodies responded to vibration. What they found was unexpected: the worms developed waves that oscillated at half the frequency of the force driving them. According to the 2019 study published in Nature, titled ‘Excitation of Faraday-like body waves in vibrated…

A feral goat. Image Credit: Scott Bauer/Wikimedia commons The introduction of goats to Seychelles islands created a long-term conservation problem, with one of the earliest eradication efforts recorded on Aride Island in 1920. The study titled ‘Introduced mammals on Western Indian Ocean islands’ documents how introduced mammals became targets of conservation programmes across the Western…

Spider-tailed horned viper (Image Credit: Omid Mozaffari) The natural world is full of animals that use mimicry to survive, but few examples are as unusual as the spider-tailed horned viper. Native to Iran, this elusive snake has evolved a remarkable tail tip that resembles a spider, complete with a bulbous body and dangling, leg-like structures….

The Mazama newt is a salamander found only in Crater Lake (Image: Oregon Zoo) More than a century ago, people introduced signal crayfish into Oregon’s Crater Lake as food for nonnative trout and salmon. The decision was made in 1915, decades before scientists understood how dramatically the crustaceans could reshape the lake’s ecosystem. Today, the…

Representative image of Hawaii from Canva In 1902, red mangroves were brought to Hawaii with an apparently practical purpose. Their tangled roots could hold soil in place, reduce erosion and stabilise shorelines around vulnerable coastal areas. At the time, the trees seemed like a useful solution for an island environment shaped by waves, storms and…

A still from Terminator 2: Judgement Day Marvel Studios is as good a metaphor for what happens when a company starts believing in its own infallibility. After the success of Endgame in 2019, Disney executives were thoroughly convinced that no matter what they produced, it would be lapped up by audiences if you stuck a…

Washington has reached a striking milestone in its effort to make a major highway safer for wildlife. More than 10,000 successful animal crossings have now been recorded at the I-90 wildlife overcrossing near Snoqualmie Pass. The milestone was reached in July 2026 and was announced by the Washington State Department of Transportation. The bridge is…

Wildlife biologists tracking lions and spotted hyenas in Southern Africa have found evidence that challenges a long-held belief about how the two predators interact. Instead of hyenas mainly following lions to find leftover food, the study found that male lions often actively move towards spotted hyenas, while the hyenas try to get away. The study,…