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Science

Essays and videos exploring physics, evolution, cosmology and other frontiers in science
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Earth science and climate

The only man permitted in Bhutan’s sacred mountains chronicles humanity’s impact

22 minutes

A measure for depth of water stands upright in a dried up landscape that was formerly a lake
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Information and communication

Beware climate populism

The most ardent deniers of anthropogenic climate change today will become the climate conspiracy theorists of tomorrow

Ákos Szegőfi

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Earth science and climate

When does after begin?

Three earthquakes hit Mexico City on the same date in 1985, 2017 and 2022. The coincidence left the city stranded in time

Lachlan Summers

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Palaeontology

The dinosaurs didn’t rule

When we think of changes in Earth’s history as changes of dynasty we miss out on understanding how life really works

Riley Black

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Stories and literature

Poet of impermanence

Enheduana is the first known named author. Her poems of strife and upheaval resonate in our own unstable times

Sophus Helle

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Earth science and climate

Deep warming

Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. Waste heat could radically alter Earth’s future

Mark Buchanan

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Anthropology

Memories within myth

The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records

Patrick Nunn

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Earth science and climate

The return of silvopasture

This ancient practice, nurturing animals and trees in an ecological system, fights climate change and restores the land

Liz Carlisle & Niki Mazaroli

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Earth science and climate

A biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse

6 minutes

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Environmental history

Disturbance

How atomic doomsday experiments, fuelled by Cold War fears, shaped then shook ecologists’ faith in self-healing nature

Laura J Martin

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Space exploration

There’s no planet B

The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. Here’s why

Arwen E Nicholson & Raphaëlle D Haywood

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Earth science and climate

Our Earth, shaped by life

Darwin was the first to see that all lifeforms, from worms to corals, transform the planet. What does that mean for us?

Olivia Judson

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History of science

A singular scientist

James Lovelock was a visionary whose greatest ideas were made possible by his unshakeable independence

Roger Highfield

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Oceans and water

Tomorrow’s corals

A warming planet and acid oceans will radically transform marine ecosystems. How will our beloved reefs survive?

Klaus M Stiefel & James D Reimer

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The environment

Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning

10 minutes

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Ecology and environmental sciences

To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice

6 minutes

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Earth science and climate

The Antarctic paradox

The most protected place on Earth has become one of the most threatened – and threatening. Can its problems be solved?

Alejandra Mancilla & Peder Roberts

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Earth science and climate

A new Earth rises

How did the planet replace the nation-state to become the prime political object of the 21st century?

Erik Isberg

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Childhood and adolescence

When Paradise, California burned, its teens became instant climate refugees

23 minutes

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Archaeology

Poseidon’s wrath

Vanished beneath the waves in 373 BCE, Helike is a byword for thinking about disaster, for ancients and moderns alike

Guy D Middleton

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Earth science and climate

How much can science really tell us about the future of climate change?

24 minutes

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Earth science and climate

‘Ice has a memory’ – an Inuit poem contemplates scientific exploration of Greenland

28 minutes

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Archaeology

The deep Anthropocene

A revolution in archaeology has exposed the extraordinary extent of human influence over our planet’s past and its future

Lucas Stephens, Erle Ellis & Dorian Fuller

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Earth science and climate

Climate change science is centuries, not decades old, and it was pioneered by a woman

5 minutes