Asteroid impact pushes life underground

Scientists studying life deep below an asteroid impact crater in the United States have found tiny organisms thriving kilometres under the surface.

Polar bears speciated far earlier than previously thought

The Arctic's top predators split off from brown bears, their closest relatives, around 600,000 years ago - five times earlier than scientists had generally assumed.

Nomad Plan­ets

New re­search sug­gests that bil­lions of stars in our gal­axy have cap­tured rogue plan­ets that once roamed the voids be­tween stars.  The no­mad worlds, which were kicked out of the star sys­tems in which they formed, could oc­ca­sion­ally find a new home with a dif­fer­ent sun, as­tro­no­mers pro­pose. This could explain the ex­ist­ence of some plan­ets that or­bit sur­pris­ingly far from their stars, and even the ex­ist­ence of a double-plan­et sys­tem.

Egg size was dinosaurs ultimate undoing?

Researchers claim a mathematical model has shown that infant size was the clincher.

Nothing helps create pure randomness

Quantum fluctuations within a vacuum are helping Australian researchers create billions of random numbers.

Baboons can learn to differentiate between real and nonsense words

Baboons can recognise scores of written words, a feat that raises intriguing questions about how we learn to read.

Baboons Can Identify Specific Combinations of Letters in Words

New results show that monkeys identify specific combinations of letters in words and detect anomalies -- a capacity that certainly existed before speech.

T-rex had a giant feathered ancestor

Palæontologists in China have uncovered the biggest feathered dinosaur ever found.

Recent trends in social primatology and human ethology

From Grooming to Speaking

Planets from long ago puzzle astronomers

As­tro­no­mers have iden­ti­fied a plan­e­tary sys­tem that they de­scribe as a likely sur­vi­vor from one of the earliest cos­mic times, 13 bil­lion years ago. The sys­tem, they say, con­sists of a star dubbed HIP 11952, and two plan­ets that or­bit it eve­ry 290 and sev­en Earth days, re­spec­tive­ly.

Earth-like planets could number “billions” in our galaxy

The first di­rect es­ti­mate of the num­ber of small plan­ets around red dwarf stars sug­gests that bil­lions of those worlds, po­ten­tially with liq­uid wa­ter, ex­ist in our gal­axy alone.

Coupled stars seen as chief diet for hungry black holes

Gi­ant black holes in the cen­ters of ga­lax­ies may grow to their enor­mous sizes by swal­low­ing sin­gle stars from pairs of stars that wan­der too close.

Japanese bees cook enemy in 'bee ball'

When confronted with their arch-enemy, the aggressive giant Asian hornet, the honeybees will attack it by swarming en masse around the hornet and forming what scientists call a "hot defensive bee ball" - a move unique to their species. With up to 500 bees all vibrating their flight muscles at once, the bee ball cooks the hornet to death.

Cave holds earliest sign of fire-use

Evidence of campfires made by human ancestors has been uncovered in a cave in South Africa, suggesting that the practice may have started one million years ago.