Steve James, from Devon, hits halfway mark in coastline challenge as scientists monitor impact of extreme feat The first fortnight was tough – terrible blisters, a flare of gout that needed a visit to A&E and the rapid realisation that running 200 marathons in 200 days around the coast of...
Google develops AI tool that fills missing words in Roman inscriptions
Aeneas program, which predicts where and when Latin texts were made, called ‘transformative’ by historians In addition to sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health, the Romans also produced a lot of inscriptions. Making sense of the ancient texts can be a slog...
‘Long-lived and lucky’ ship wrecked off Orkney was at siege of Quebec, experts find
Archaeologists and volunteers identify Sanday timbers as from 18th-century Royal Navy frigate turned whaler When a schoolboy running on a beach on the island of Sanday in Orkney last year came across the timbers of a shipwreck that had been exposed after a storm, local people knew the ship might...
Earth’s underground networks of fungi need urgent protection, say researchers
Study finds that only 9.5% of fungal biodiversity hotspots fell within existing protected areas The underground networks of fungi that underpin the planet’s ecosystems needs urgent conservation action by politicians, a research organisation has said. Scientists from the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (Spun) have created the first...
About 700m years ago, the Earth froze over entirely – now we may know why
Researchers believe huge volcanic eruptions, and the absence of plants, turned our planet into one giant snowball It’s hard to believe, but about 700m years ago it’s thought that our planet completely froze over with little to no liquid ocean or lakes exposed to the atmosphere, even in the tropics....