Science
Why do stars twinkle ?
Stars twinkle. Planets shine steadily. Why?
Stars twinkle (scintillate) because they’re so far away from Earth that, even through large telescopes, they appear only...
What’s the strongest material produced by animals?
Animals can produce incredibly strong substances - so who makes the toughest?
Spider silk, long the strongest known biological material, was recently knocked off...
Shipwrecked French Champagne – Revealing tastes from the past
Scientists say that 170-year old champagne found on a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea actually tasted pretty good. The French...
Annual aerial survey of southern right whales
The Mammal Research Institute’s Whale Unit (University of Pretoria) will be conducting their annual aerial survey of southern right whales from 29 September...
Marine Tourism
How Whales Become Entangled
This illustration shows how fishing lines attached to traps and buoys on the ocean floor present a potentially deadly hazard to North Atlantic...
#GreenXmas @intheOverberg
We are grateful to the champions @intheoverberg @WWFSouthAfrica @GoSocialSA @GoToSouthAfrica @ShotLeft who created a twitter #chat platform on 25 November where we could share...
What is the smell of rain?
You can tell when rain is coming just by the smell
The word for it is “petrichor.” It’s the name of an oil that’s...
Mussel matchmaking and the glue that holds them
New research shows how mussels find the perfect match. For mussels, fertilization occurs between eggs and sperm that have been released into the...
Beached dead whales can alter the ocean’s carbon footprint
Decades of whaling and fishing for the largest species have altered the ability of oceans to store and sequester carbon.
An individual whale contains...
