Science & Earth

The Yanacocha Reserve in the Ecuadorian Andes is the last known refuge for the Black‑breasted puffleg, a 9 cm hummingbird with an IUCN estimate of about 150–200 birds, and conservationists are working to restore its cloud-forest habitat.

The RSPB says recent cold, unsettled weather in Europe may push more migratory birds such as fieldfares and redwings to spend winter in the UK, and the Big Garden Birdwatch runs 23–25 January.

About 37% of Scotland's waters are designated as Marine Protected Areas, but most lack management and bottom trawling or scallop dredging is permitted across much of the inshore coast; the Scottish government has delayed a consultation on coastal fisheries measures by at least six months.

Families and officials gathered at Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 22 to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1986 Challenger accident; speakers noted that cold-weakened O-ring seals and organizational failings contributed and said those lessons remain relevant.

Suni Williams said looking down at Earth from space made her see people as a single human group without visible borders; she has retired after a 27-year NASA career and logged 608 days in space.

Researchers report a hand stencil in Sulawesi dated to at least 67,800 years ago, described as the oldest securely dated cave art, and the cave sequence shows painting continued across many millennia with later additions around 4,000 years ago.

Astronauts evacuated from the International Space Station spoke publicly after a rare medical evacuation, and one crew member said the onboard portable ultrasound "came in super handy".

Officials say a landslide at Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park has left multiple children unaccounted for while emergency services search the site; a separate landslip in Welcome Bay killed two people, authorities said.

Astronauts said a portable ultrasound aboard the International Space Station was used when a medical issue arose on Jan. 7 and helped during the response; the crew declined to say which member received care.

Researchers recorded four years of temperature, salinity and current data beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, finding systematic seasonal variations and persistent layered waters that partly isolate the ice underside.

Researchers report an 11-centimetre elephant bone fragment from Boxgrove is about 500,000 years old and bears deliberate shaping marks consistent with use as a hammer or retoucher to sharpen stone tools.

A 410-million-year-old Prototaxites fossil found in the Rhynie area of Aberdeenshire has been added to the National Museums Scotland collection and will be cared for at its Edinburgh collection centre.

Researchers have responded to recent coverage questioning studies that detect microplastics in human tissues, saying methodological debate is normal and that analytical standards need strengthening.

The government published draft Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance urging green spaces, nature features and local amenities in new English housing developments, but the guidance is not mandatory and environmental groups say developers could ignore it.

A Nature study by Dr Simon Andreas Scheuring proposes the Great Pyramid was built from the inside out using sliding counterweights and pulley-like mechanisms, citing wear marks in the Grand Gallery as supporting evidence; separate research mapped a buried Nile tributary that could have carried stone to Giza.

A University of Limerick team developed an app that uses drone imagery and machine learning to detect plastic on shorelines and provide GPS coordinates for targeted clean-ups, and the system has been tested in Ireland and in pilot programmes in several other countries.

A University of Vienna study that combined 2,782 measurements from 283 sites (2014–2024) finds global airborne microplastic emissions are 100–10,000 times lower than earlier estimates and estimates about 610 quadrillion particles per year from land and 26 quadrillion from oceans.

The UK’s £15bn warm homes plan does not set a ban or 2035 phaseout for new gas boilers and includes £2.7bn for a boiler upgrade scheme to support heat pump installations.

Parts of south-west England saw the Northern Lights after a coronal mass ejection from the Sun, the Met Office said; the CME was likely to bring aurora across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England and possibly further south.

A UN report says many critical water systems are already 'bankrupt', and it reports that about 75% of people live in countries classed as water-insecure or critically water-insecure.

A UN-led report published Jan. 20, 2026 says the world has entered an era of 'water bankruptcy,' with about 4 billion people facing severe water scarcity for at least one month a year and many natural water systems no longer reliably recovering.

The British Museum reports 79,616 finds recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme in 2024 and 1,540 treasure cases—the highest single-year total—with metal detectorists accounting for 94% of recorded finds.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a wearable AI collar called Revoice that uses throat vibration sensors, pulse signals and an embedded large language model to reconstruct speech; a small trial of five patients with dysarthria reported a 2.9% sentence error rate.

Cameras placed in 415 volunteer gardens across Cheshire detected hedgehogs in 57% of sites, and gardens that provided hedgehog food had higher detection rates (78%). Researchers report that supplementary feeding strongly influenced visits but may carry health and behavioural risks that need further study.

An Austrian Brown Swiss cow named Veronika was observed using a broom to scratch different body areas, and researchers recorded 76 instances of purposeful tool use during field trials reported in Current Biology.

Volunteers have been removing thousands of bags of chips that washed ashore near Eastbourne after shipping containers carrying food and packaging came ashore, and officials warned the debris and plastics could harm wildlife and water quality.

The Inishkea Islands are two uninhabited islands off County Mayo, roughly 3 km from the mainland, with preserved stone buildings and early Christian sites. They host coastal wildlife such as puffins, seals, whales and dolphins, and are reachable by boat while camping has been banned since 2023.

Officials say a young male elephant in West Singhbhum, Jharkhand, has killed 22 people and remains at large; forest officers have deployed to locate and tranquillise it.

NASA moved the Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B on Saturday; a pad fueling test is planned in early February and will determine the path to a possible launch later that month.

Nasa is preparing to roll out the Space Launch System for Artemis II, a crewed circumnavigation of the moon that could launch as early as 6 February. The flight would carry four astronauts on a roughly 685,000-mile round trip and return with a Pacific Ocean splashdown about 10 days later.