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Best time to buy binoculars and save

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If you’ve tried to buy a pair of the best binoculars for stargazing in recent months you’ll know that prices are sky-high. In fact, all shapes, sizes and price points of binoculars for kids and adults are about 30% higher now compared to last year. Why have binoculars become so expensive? What’s the best time … Read more

CERN Suspends Collaborations with Russia

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The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will not enter new collaborations with Russian scientific institutions following a request of Ukraine‘s scientists to halt partnerships with Russian science institutions in response to Russia‘s military invasion of their country. CERN operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world including the famous Large Hadron Collider, which … Read more

Western nations cut ties with Russian science, even as some projects try to remain neutral | Science

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In 2011, Russia signed a deal that would pay the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) $300 million to help found the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), an English-language research university on the outskirts of Moscow. Dozens of researchers from around the world leaped at the chance for a foreign assignment, which they thought … Read more

World’s largest particle physics lab suspends political ties with Russia | Science

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In responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the politicians who control the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, are trying to strike a delicate balance. In a special session, the CERN Council, which is composed of representatives from the laboratory’s 23 member nations, voted to suspend the “observer” privileges of the Russian Federation, CERN announced today. … Read more

Legendary Shipwreck of Shackleton’s Endurance Is Discovered in Antarctic Waters

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The wreck of the steam-yacht Endurance, which famously sank in 1915 during an Antarctic expedition by the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, has been rediscovered by searchers using autonomous underwater vehicles. The shipwreck was found at a depth of 9,869 feet (3,008 meters) beneath West Antarctica‘s Weddell Sea, according to the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), … Read more

Sharks save energy with daytime naps | Science

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Sharks benefit from some shuteye, and biologists in Australia and New Zealand think they’ve begun to understand why. Their experiments suggest sharks sleep to save energy between meals. The discovery might lead to a clearer model of how sleep evolved and developed among vertebrate animals. There is plenty of evidence of sleep in vertebrate animals, … Read more

Spiders Use Electric Fields to Fly, And We May Finally Know How

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Having never evolved wings, many species of spider instead evolved an uncanny ability to take to the skies using nothing more than a few short threads of gossamer dangling from their dainty butts.   Just how this invertebrate answer to paragliding works has never been entirely clear, though historically biologists have assumed it probably has … Read more

Bringing back the woolly mammoth and other extinct creatures may be impossible | Science

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An extinct rat that once lived on an island in the Indian Ocean may have put the kibosh on scientists’ dreams of resurrecting more famous extinct animals like the woolly mammoth. The Christmas Island rat disappeared just over 100 years ago, but researchers now say even its detailed genome isn’t complete enough to bring it … Read more