The photographs are among the most striking images in science: a column of ash rising into the dark, with lightning threading through it.
The informal name is a dirty thunderstorm,…
Almost every design feature on an aircraft has a reason, and most of them are invisible to passengers. The window shape is the exception: it is the one piece of…
There is a paradox at the centre of the Amazon that took a long time for outsiders to notice.
The rainforest is the most productive terrestrial ecosystem on Earth, and…
Almost everyone has done it: left a note in a pocket, washed the trousers, and found the money at the bottom of the drum, damp and crumpled but entirely usable.…
Children ask why the sea is salty, and the standard answer — rivers carry salt into it and evaporation leaves the salt behind — is correct as far as it…
Two kinds of place are worth visiting: working research sites at altitude, and historic instruments in cities that show how the work was done before electronics. Here are eleven of…