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Science

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

Biology

How the world’s richest reds are derived from an innocuous Mexican insect

5 minutes

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essay

Biology

Building embryos

For 3,000 years, humans have struggled to understand the embryo. Now there is a revolution underway

John Wallingford

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video

Chemistry

Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?

12 minutes

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essay

Biology

The cell is not a factory

Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature. That’s why we need better metaphors to describe cellular life

Charudatta Navare

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essay

Animals and humans

Ant geopolitics

Over the past four centuries quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

John Whitfield

A double-exposure image of a dancer on stage against a black backdrop, his body is lit and partly shot in motion blur
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essay

Genetics

Artists of our own lives

The genome is the starting point for a performance we enact over a lifetime, not a blueprint we’ve got to follow

Richard O Prum

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video

Ageing and death

Demystifying death – a palliative care specialist’s practical guide to life’s end

4 minutes

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video

Biology

Explore a bioluminescent world of cellular life via cutting-edge microscopy

27 minutes

Peach Twig (Prunus Persica) (1918) by Royal Charles Steadman
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video

Biology

In 1886, a US agency set out to record new fruit varieties. The results are wondrous

5 minutes

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video

Biology

To understand how an animal sees the world, start with the shape of its pupils

5 minutes

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video

Animals and humans

Scientists brought a wild horse back from extinction. But is it truly the same animal?

5 minutes

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video

Ecology and environmental sciences

The grassroots project that’s restoring an endangered Hawaiian ecosystem

22 minutes

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video

Biology

The key to geckos’ unrivalled climbing skills isn’t sticky feet. It’s subatomic

4 minutes

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video

Space exploration

In the search for life, might alien ocean worlds be a better bet than Earth-like planets?

5 minutes

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video

Biology

A dazzling slice-by-slice exploration of wood exposes hidden patterns and hues

2 minutes

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essay

Biology

Octopus time

We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?

David Borkenhagen

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video

Biology

The idea that life on Earth originated elsewhere is not as far out as it seems

6 minutes

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video

Biology

Flicker through the eclectic beauty and biological diversity of 2,400 leaves

3 minutes

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video

Biotechnology

What it’s like to wear a prosthetic that ‘feels’

6 minutes

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video

Biology

To understand the limits of human senses, look to the wild world of animal cognition

45 minutes

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video

Evolution

Symmetry rules life on Earth – but it comes with many fascinating exceptions

9 minutes

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video

Biology

There’s no one way for an insect to fly, but they’re all amazing in close up and slo-mo

7 minutes

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essay

Evolution

Fortune favours the shrewd

Attaining and maintaining power lies at the heart of almost all animal societies. And it’s as devious as human politicking

Lee Alan Dugatkin

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video

Biology

Dazzling timelapse shows how microbes spoil our food – and sometimes enrich it

22 minutes