Earth & Climate

How cold-tolerant was Homo sapiens?

Excavations in the Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria. (Photo: Tsenka Tsanova / MPI-EVA Leipzig, CC-BY-SA 2.0) The first groups of Homo sapiens reached Europe...

This roundworm has no ears, but can hear

This is the view of American researchers who previously discovered that the same roundworm, despite not having eyes, can detect light. That can be read...

Lignite: East German power plants will be uneconomical even before 2030

Lignite power plant in Lusatia. (Image: reidecki / iStock) So far, the federal government's climate roadmap provides for a coal phase-out by 2038, and...

For astronomers, autumn starts tonight, but for meteorologists, autumn has already begun

Tonight at 9:21 p.m., autumn begins for astronomers. However, meteorologists have been in it for weeks. For meteorologists, autumn has already begun. They...

The world’s longest cave just got longer this month

The cave turns out to be almost 13 kilometers longer than expected. The famous Mammoth Cave, located in the US state of Kentucky, is the...

How it crashed in the solar system

The inferno kept coming: devastating impacts shaped the history of the earth. (Image: solarseven / iStock) When celestial bodies became cosmic bombs: In the...

Photo worth seeing: Dangerous roads

These chimpanzees manage to cross the jungle road in Guinea unmolested. But for many of their conspecifics, the roads built into the forests...

Corona crisis is not the breakthrough that the climate needs so badly

Emissions are rising again. And the 'green recovery' that many hoped for after this far-reaching crisis is nowhere to be seen. When the corona...

Climate change endangers the basis of the polar food web

Researchers take phytoplankton samples from the Arctic Ocean. (Photo: Katrin Schmidt) Depending on the temperature of the sea water, the plankton in the oceans...

Early bird with expensive sex appeal

On the left the fossil of Yuanchuavis kompsosoura (Image: Gao Wei) and on the right an artist's depiction of the Cretaceous bird (Image: Haozhen...

Cautious excitement among physicists: New CERN data defy the Standard Model

The data cannot be explained by our current laws of nature. There is a huge particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border – underground – the...

Scientists come up with a synthetic cell that can divide

The cell – equipped with computer-designed DNA – should provide more insight into the basic processes that underlie life. Five years ago, scientists created a...

Can this hydrogen jet make aviation really go green?

The Delft students who built the plane themselves and will send it into the air this year, fervently hope so. In 2018, the Dutch transport...

We obey robots better after a tender touch

Research shows that we apparently like to be touched by robots. In fact, we are even more likely to follow their advice afterwards. What...

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