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Learn what hurricane rapid intensification means, why warm deep water and favourable atmospheric conditions matter, how Hurricane Polo intensified so quickly, and why forecasting these changes remains challenging.
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Learn what Omega Centauri is, how globular clusters differ from galaxies and open clusters, why its stellar populations are unusual, and how astronomers use stellar motions to search for hidden black holes.
ESA's JUICE spacecraft will fly past Earth again in September 2026. Learn how gravity assists change spacecraft speed and direction without creating energy from nothing.
Learn what a supernova remnant is, how blast waves create shells and filaments, what glowing hydrogen and oxygen reveal, and why overlapping nebulae may be unrelated.
Elias 2-24 b is less than one million years old and still embedded in its birth disc. Learn how astronomers confirmed it and why the discovery challenges planet-formation models.
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Ocean currents do far more than move seawater. Driven by winds, Earth's rotation, tides and differences in water density, they redistribute heat, bring nutrients towards the surface, influence ecosystems and weather, transport pollutants and connect distant parts of the planet.
Learn what yardangs are, how wind abrasion and deflation carve them, how they differ from dunes, and what Curiosity's 2026 Mars observations reveal about long-term erosion.
Learn why the Shrimp Nebula Sh2-188 is strongly asymmetric, how stellar winds and motion through interstellar gas create a bow shock and what models can reveal.
Learn how ESA’s Earth Explorer programme turns research questions into satellite missions, using ECO, Keystone and CryoRad as a 2026 case study.
Learn how Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis reveals valleys hidden beneath Greenland’s ice, why bedrock topography matters and where the method’s uncertainties lie.
Learn why satellites in low Earth orbit can lose altitude, how solar activity changes atmospheric drag, how reboosting works and why orbital decay eventually leads to re-entry.
Learn how pileus clouds form above vigorous wildfire convection, how they differ from smoke and pyrocumulus, why they are short-lived and what they reveal about atmospheric motion.
Learn how fish otoliths reveal age, migration and past ocean conditions through growth increments, trace elements, stable isotopes and radiocarbon validation.
Learn how landslide early-warning systems turn terrain maps, rainfall, soil conditions and forecasts into practical warnings, and why uncertainty matters.
Learn how astronomers combined spectra from more than 200,000 galaxies to estimate the Universe’s average visible colour, why an early turquoise result was corrected and what Cosmic Latte really means.
Discover why astronomers study the far-infrared universe, how cosmic dust changes what we see and what NASA’s proposed PRIMA mission is designed to investigate.
Learn the physics of gravity assists, reference frames and planetary flybys, with ESA Juice’s September 2026 Earth encounter as a current example.
Learn how scientists use single-nucleus RNA sequencing and computational analysis to map millions of human brain cells—and what these new atlases can and cannot tell us about ageing and brain disorders.