A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese gove... More »
By digging into the geologic record, scientists are learning how wildfires shaped — and were shaped by — climate change long ago.The oldest evidence of wildfire in the world can be found in a laboratory on the fourth floor of a brick building in Waterville, Ma... More »
Do you find climate breakdown funny? Do you think it’s a laughing matter that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children a planet changed for the worse beyond all recognition? I don’t – and I’m sure the presenters of Radio 4’s Today program... More »
Scientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island of Dominica have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help better protect them.Like many whales an... More »
Six decades ago, Mr. Dwight’s shot at becoming the first Black astronaut in space was thwarted by racism and politics. Now, at 90, he’s finally going up.Edward Dwight is going to space, finally.In the coming weeks, as conditions allow, Mr. Dwight is expected t... More »
Earlier today I set you this puzzle, about the tiling of a 4x4 grid. It requires a swift preamble, so here we go again.Consider the image below, which highlights adjacent rows in the grid.View image in fullscreenFor each cell in a top row, there are two choice... More »
Apologies to any Antipodean Swifties arriving on this page. Today’s puzzle is about tiles, and whether or not you can solve it swiftly.The puzzle concerns black and white tiles on a 4x4 grid. Consider the image below, which highlights adjacent rows in the grid... More »
My grandfather, Brian Haywood, who has died aged 91, spent his career working as a nuclear physicist, mainly at the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell in Oxfordshire.He was born in Birmingham to Vi and Hal, who ran a haberdashery shop. An only child, Brian ... More »
About 2 million people in England and Scotland say they are experiencing long Covid, figures reveal, with many reporting their symptoms have lasted two years or longer.The findings were released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS)and cover the period f... More »
Astronomers have discovered a black hole with a mass about 33 times greater than that of our sun, the biggest one known in the Milky Way aside from the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our galaxy.The newly identified black hole is located about... More »
Despite their peaceful reputation, bonobos act aggressively more often than their chimpanzee cousins, a new study found.In the early 1900s, primatologists noticed a group of apes in central Africa with a distinctly slender build; they called them “pygmy chimpa... More »
For tens of millions of years, Australia has been a playground for evolution, and the land Down Under lays claim to some of the most remarkable creatures on Earth.It is the birthplace of songbirds, the land of egg-laying mammals and the world capital of pouch-... More »