A vast belt of brown seaweed is stretching across the Atlantic Ocean, from the coast of West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a phenomenon so extensive that it can be tracked from space. Known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB), it has reached extraordinary proportions in 2026, about 5,000 miles in length.Satellite…
A combination of images show the evolution of supernova SN 2026gzf, which was first detected by the Einstein Probe on March 21, 2026. Images taken on March 25 and April 3, 2026, show the supernova brightening. An archival image of the host galaxy from March 9, 2016, reveals a bright blue source at the location…
Representative Image of bull sharks gathering at a coral reef and displaying social behavior (AI-generated image) Bull sharks have long been viewed as solitary hunters that cross paths mostly by chance, but a six-year study in Fiji suggests otherwise. Researchers observed adult bull sharks gathering repeatedly at a single reef site and found that individuals…
When scientists have a will, there is always a way. In a shocking yet successful project, leftover hair from haircuts that is not suitable for wigs and would have gone to waste is now being used to prevent oil and other pollutants from getting into the water and the trees.In Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay,…
In August 1868, the Sun briefly became a laboratory for astronomers gathered in India to watch a total solar eclipse. Among them was the French astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen, who turned a spectroscope towards the bright prominences rising around the eclipsed solar disc. Their light contained a yellow spectral line that seemed to sit close…
Galileo Galilei, whose studies of falling bodies and accelerated motion laid the groundwork for the principle later demonstrated by Apollo 15 on the Moon. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons. Two people can look up at the same familiar Moon and experience it in completely different ways. One sees a flat, silver disk, a fixture of the…
Learning something from a finished textbook can give us a clear answer, but it does not always show us how that answer came to be. James Clerk Maxwell believed that students could gain something deeper by returning to the original work of the scientists who first developed an idea. In his words, “It is of…
Echo 1 passes over NASA’s Goldstone Tracking Station on August 12, 1960, with the antenna and star trails visible. (Nasa photo) Exactly sixty-six years ago from today, on August 12, 1960, NASA launched Echo 1A, a 100-foot-diameter balloon that became the agency’s first successful communications satellite. Unlike modern communication satellites, Echo 1A did not actively…
The milky way and the desert at Al Quaa. Image Credit: Wikipedia During the whole of August 2026, the night skies over the Arab world are offering a unique opportunity for residents to observe the Milky Way galaxy without any specialised equipment. According to a report by the Saudi Press Agency, this natural display is…
On the afternoon of 21 August 2017, millions of people across the United States looked towards the Sun as the Moon moved across it. For most viewers, the eclipse became a short-lived memory once the sky returned to normal. For Nia Payne, a 26-year-old woman in Staten Island, the event left something behind. Within days,…
