Claire Asher

Most fires burn through their fuel in a few hours, days or weeks. When underground fossil fuel deposits catch alight, however, the fires can rage for decades. The Darvaza Gas Crater, also known as the ‘Gates of Hell’, is a 60m-wide (196ft) pit in Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert, which has been ablaze for at least 40 years. The origins of the crater are disputed. Some claim it opened in the 1970s when a rogue Soviet gas drilling rig accidentally punctured an underground pocket of natural gas

By the time you’ve read this sentence, lightning could have struck Earth as many as 270 times. That may sound like a lot, but according to the UK’s Met Office, there are about 44 lightning strikes every second. Put another way, that’s about 3,000,000 strikes a day, globally. Given that amazing frequency and the fact that scientists have been observing this natural phenomenon for centuries, we must have masses of data on lightning and a pretty good idea of what causes it, right? Well, not quite...

Deep in the Chihuahuan Desert in northern Mexico lies a mysterious area known as the Mapimí Zone of Silence, where legend has it radio signals and other forms of communication can’t be received. The Zone of Silence developed its supernatural reputation in the 1970s, after a failed rocket test by the US Air Force led to a large clean-up operation. Rumour has it that magnetic anomalies – either in the ground or the atmosphere – caused the rocket crash, as well as the communication failures that...

The world’s deepest blue hole (marine sinkhole) lies off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. It’s at least 420m (1,378ft) deep, but explorers still haven’t found its bottom. Known as Taam Ja’, or ‘deep water’ in the Mayan language, it was discovered more than 20 years ago by a local diver, but it wasn’t until 2021 that scientists attempted to measure its depth. Using an echo sounder to bounce sound waves off the bottom of the hole, they estimated Taam Ja’ was 275m (902ft) deep...

The Stone Age might conjure up images of early humans, sitting around a campfire or hunting prehistoric beasts, but evidence shows that we’re not the only species that has learned how to work with stone tools. Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use stone tools to crack open nuts. They place the nut on a flattened rock (known as an anvil) and strike it with a second stone (known as a hammer). Thick branches can also be used. Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire in Africa shows that chimpanzees have bee...

Wildlife populations around the world are in crisis. Recent analysis by the World Wide Fund For Nature estimated that over the past 50 years, wildlife populations have reduced by 73 per cent. In the face of these unprecedented declines, it’s more important than ever that scientists understand the challenges animals face and how they’re responding to a changing planet. This requires data collection on a scale never attempted before – tracking the lives of animals at a global level – and scient...

One of the most famous pioneers in aviation, Amelia Earhart is best known for becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. But her story ended in tragedy in 1937, when her Lockheed 10-E Electra plane disappeared without a trace while she attempted an ambitious round-the-world flight. Hoping to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe around the equator, Earhart planned a 46,670km (29,000-mile) journey from California across Central and South America, Africa, Australia ...

Militaries around the world work extremely hard to keep their latest innovations secret, for obvious reasons. But this secrecy can spark intense curiosity and speculation among members of the public. Every so often, military secrets are released, if only many decades after they were invented. One such example is Fogbank – a secret material used in the production of nuclear warheads. Its manufacture was so highly classified that details of the process were lost. So, when a fresh batch...

The familiar V-shaped flight formation of geese and other birds helps them save energy, by exploiting uplifting air created by the bird in front. When a bird flies, it forces air downwards beneath its wings. This air then flows upwards from the wing tips, creating an updraft on either side. Tracking devices strapped to ibises confirmed that they carefully position themselves and time their wing beats to catch the updraft from the bird in front.
This technique, known as ‘drafting’, is used by ...

Hot, dry winds carrying dust from the Sahara Desert are known as Calima. The winds can lift millions of tonnes of dust and fine sand up to 6km (3.7 miles) into the atmosphere, colouring the sky orange and turning rainwater a muddy brown colour (also known as blood rain). The suspended particles can be carried thousands of miles on atmospheric currents. When they reach lower altitudes, they can reduce visibility and cause respiratory issues. Calima mainly affects...

In the depths of winter, when conditions are just right, glittering clouds turn the polar skies into a spectacle of colour. Rainbow clouds – also known as ‘nacreous’ or ‘mother-of-pearl’ clouds after their resemblance to the iridescent shells of some molluscs – are an extremely rare atmospheric phenomenon. Known scientifically as ‘polar stratospheric clouds’, they’re found much higher in the atmosphere than clouds normally form. Most clouds are found less than 10km (6 miles) above Earth’s sur...

In certain parts of the world, such as Canada’s Hudson Bay, gravity is slightly lower than elsewhere. This is because objects with more mass exert a greater gravitational force and Earth’s mass isn’t uniform, so gravity varies from place to place. You’d need some very accurate scales to notice though – gravity in Hudson Bay is about 4/1,000ths of a per cent less than Earth’s average. When scientists discovered this anomaly in the 1960s, they developed two theories to explain it. The first is ...

For many years, the North Atlantic Ocean warmed more slowly than other parts of the world. In 2023, that changed — dramatically. Over the last year and a half, North Atlantic sea surface temperatures surged, with record-breaking heat extending roughly from Greenland south to the Caribbean, bleaching corals there, while whipping up violent European storms and fueling U.S. hurricanes like Helene and Milton. The underlying cause of this regionalized heating is undoubtedly greenhouse gas emissions. But while global emissions have been increasingly steadily, the climate has shown an abrupt...

In today’s world, disinformation and ‘alternative facts’ have become ubiquitous. But nearly 200 years ago, one reporter inadvertently created a science hoax that captured global attention.

The combined effects of humanity’s actions are making ecosystems less resistant to change, and threatening the vital ecosystem services humanity relies upon, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. It’s already well known that humanity is driving myriad systemic environmental changes: altering the climate, converting forests to farmland, polluting the oceans with plastics, diminishing wild species, and much more. Yet scientists have little idea how these different environmental stresses are combining to impact ecosystems...