A new paleoclimatic study conducted on a stalactite from the island of Flores, Indonesia, shows a marked decline in rainfall between 76,000 and 55,000 years ago, with a peak of aridity shortly before the disappearance of Homo floresiensisone of the most curious and well-known extinct human species, which lived between 700,000 and 50,000 years ago and is considered an example ...
In the forests of Madagascar hides the Darwin’s bark spider (Caerostris darwini), a natural “engineer” famous for weaving the cobwebs toughest on the planet. These structures, long too 25 meters and wide up to 2.8 square metershave been found suspended above rivers and are made of silk ten times stronger than Kevlarthe material of bulletproof vests. However large they are, ...
Credit: NASA The Thwaites Glacierknown as “glacier of the Apocalypse”, in West Antarcticait’s becoming increasingly unstable. Its ice shelf floating on the ocean is fracturing and its anchor point to land is weakening. If the glacier were to disintegrate and melt completely, the sea level could rise by more than 1 metre. The mechanism by which Thwaites is losing ice ...
Image generated with AI. At least 200,000 liters of oil I am leaked from the PCK refinery pipeline into Brandenburg (Germany), due to an accident at the Gramzow pipeline station. According to initial investigations, crude oil leaked from a small leak for approximately 2 and a half hours at a pressure of approx 20 barsgoing to create a 25 meter ...
The Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba. Credit: NASA The Gulf of Suezthe arm of the sea that extends in the northern part of Red Sea delimiting the Sinai peninsula, it progressively widens at the rate of approximately 0.5 mm per year. It is the result of the study by a team of Chinese, French ...
Image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope on November 30, 2025. Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.–T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI). The radio interferometer ALMAin Chile, found that the comet 3I/ATLAS releases copious amounts of methanol (CH3OH) e of hydrogen cyanide (HCN), molecules involved in the synthesis of ...
Many times we find ourselves wondering “But was it that cold last year?” or “But was it this hot in other years?”. These are questions that can be answered by searching through the meteorological archives, and that’s what we did: we bring you the temperatures ofDecember 11th scheduled for Milan, Rome, Naples And Palermocompared with those of the same date ...
When we do a tattoo, what happens is that one or more needles deposit the ink inside our skin thanks to the use of a special machine. But why does the ink stay still inside the skin? It’s thanks to ours immune systemspecifically thank you macrophages, that is, cells that try to eliminate foreign bodies when they enter our skin. ...
In Australia it is illegal to use social networks for anyone under the age of 16. It is the first “ban” of this type in the world: an unprecedented decision carefully observed by governments and regulators around the world, which some teenagers have already resorted to. The aim of the law, which came into force today, Wednesday 10 December 2025aims ...
If Roman concrete lasted so long through the millennia, we finally know why: during the excavations of a Roman construction site that had remained intact since 79 AD and recently discovered in Pompeii, the use of “hot mixing“, a technique that gave the material self-repairing and resistance properties. Admir Masic, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute ...