CATEGORIES

Dinosaurs - The First Dinosaurs Could Have Come From Britain

Revolutionary new research may mean we have to redraw the dinosaurs’ family tree.

Dr John Roberts: When Top Gear Was Looking to Recreate the Car Chase in the Italian Job, They Came to Me

Engineer Dr John Roberts talks to Helen Pilcher about rollercoasters, Top Gear stunts and his latest design project, the British Airways i360.

Where Are All the Clones?

It’s 20 years since scientists in Edinburgh cloned Dolly the sheep. Commentators at the time promised us a world overrun by cloned animals and humans. So where are they?

The Righteous Royal Rebel

Man Of The People Or Power-Hungry Opportunist? The Duke Of Monmouth’S Bid For The Crown Perished On The Somerset Levels In 1685 – And, With It, His Reputation. But, Says Anna Keay, It’S Time To Revise Our Ideas About The Illegitimate Son Of Charles II

Quantum Weirdness

"The keenness of nutters to reach for the 'Q-word' has made life tough for researches."

Life After Man

From asteroid strike to climate change to nuclear war, humanity faces all kinds of existential threats. But if our species disappeared tomorrow, what would actually happen – and what kind of planet would we be leaving behind?

Dinosaur Brain Identified for First Time Ever

This ‘brown pebble’ found by a fossil hunter in Sussex more than a decade ago has been confirmed as the first known example of dinosaur brain tissue.

The Battle That Broke The Germans

When the Allies launched an offensive at Amiens 100 years ago this month, they did so with such precision and power that enemy troops were soon surrendering in their thousands. Nick Lloyd describes a battle that shattered German morale, and asks, why is it not more celebrated today?

The Genetic Hunt For Nessie

For centuries, many have claimed that a creature lurks in Loch Ness. Now, by seeking out monster DNA from the loch’s waters, scientists are going to find out what’s down there

The Most mysterious Objects In The Universe

The discovery in October 2017 of a bizarre, cigar-shaped object hurtling through our Solar System set imaginations racing. Was it an asteroid? A comet? Or an alien spaceship, sent here on a reconnaissance mission? Named ‘Oumuamua, it joined a select group of cosmic enigmas and celestial oddities that have astronomers scratching their heads…

The Pigeons' War On Hitler

Gordon Corera describes an ingenious British operation to subvert Nazi rule in Europe – using carrier birds.

Could Geoengineering Cause A Climate War?

If country leaders manipulate the weather to do their bidding, could they create political tensions, or even all-out war?

Down On The Body Farm

Corpses can tell you a lot – if you know how to read them. And just like language, decomposition is dependent on location. Which is why some researchers think it’s time to start studying the dialect of decay in the UK.

Tricks Of The Mind

Psychologists are starting to figure out why we get false memories, and it turns out that they might even be useful… 

Prof Raj Lada

Helen Pilcher quizzes the founder of the Christmas Tree Research Centre to find out his secret formula for avoiding a carpet covered in pine needles…

She's Having A Bubble!

Kedah, Malaysia

Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Impact Was Worse Than We Thought

Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula in Central America, forming the Chicxulub crater and wiping out the dinosaurs in what is known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event. But two new pieces of research suggest that this impact was even more cataclysmic than was previously believed. 

Newly Identified Orangutan Is World's Most Endangered Great Ape Species

A population of orangutans that lives in a remote part of northern Sumatra, and that was only discovered in 1997, has now been identified as a separate species. With only around 800 individuals known to exist, it’s now also the most threatened of all great ape species.

Mission Into The Sun

We’ve visited Pluto and the outer reaches of the Solar System, and our rovers are trundling over the surface of Mars. Yet the Sun has remained stubbornly out of reach… until now

Norman England's Warrior Queen

The achievements of Matilda of Boulogne, wife of King Stephen, are often overlooked in favour of her enemy, Empress Maud. Alison Weir examines the woman who raised an army in the 1140s to defend the English throne.

Cockatoos Are Skilful Shape-Sorters

Who’s a clever boy, then? Goffin’s cockatoos, a species of small parrot native to Australasia, have been shown to have similar shape-recognition abilities to a human two-year-old.

Could Neanderthal Mind Reveal What Made Modern Humans A Successful Species?

Scientists are growing ‘mini-brains’ containing Neanderthal genes. Could they reveal what made modern humans such a successful species?

Fossil Of First Known Perching Bird Found

Specimen holds clues to the origin of more than half of current bird species.

Monster Movers

Think moving house is difficult? Take a look at the gargantuan machines that are needed to move rockets, wind turbines, Antarctic bases and even entire buildings

Life And Times Of A Tiger Queen

Ranthambhore is one of few places in the world where tigers can live long and prosper. Here, we celebrate this renowned Indian reserve through the story of one of its stars – a remarkable female called Noor.

The Hunt For The Oldest Galaxies In The Universe

The deeper we look into the vastness of space, the further back in time we are able to see. Now, NASA’s RELICS project is pushing this phenomenon as far as it can in an attempt to observe galaxies that formed at the very beginning of the Universe

A New Dawn For Redonda

Removing goats and rats from a remote Caribbean island involved abseiling, catapults and nappies, as Jenny Daltry reveals.

What Will It Take For Us To Travel Through Time?

In 1915 in Berlin, at the height of WWI, Albert Einstein presented a revolutionary new theory of gravity – the General Theory of Relativity. It has since become one of the most successful theories ever, passing every observational test thrown at it and predicating cosmological phenomena such as the Big Bang, black holes and gravitational waves. But the theory has also given scientists sleepless nights because it makes one thing pretty much unavoidable: time machines…

The Immortal Viking

He butchered serpents, pillaged on an epic scale, laughed in the face of death – and, in doing so, helped forge the modern ideal of the archetypal Viking warrior. Eleanor Parker tells the story of the ultimate Norse legend: Ragnar Lothbrok.

A Bite-Sized History Of Dentistry

Humanity’s long quest for a pearly white smile has produced everything from jewelled Maya tooth implants to ivory dentures given as a wedding present. Emily Scott-Dearing introduces Charlotte Hodgman to seven of the most fascinating objects from an exhibition on the history of teeth at the Wellcome Collection museum in the UK.