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Anthropomorphic alien creature in futuristic silver spacesuit looking at camera at dark night.

Why aliens are (probably) too lazy to make first contact

Space is big. Why not kick back, relax, and wait for them to come to you?
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Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel in flowers.

This sleepy squirrel could unlock a new way to treat heart disease

Inspired by hibernating squirrels, scientists have developed a promising new drug that could transform how we treat heart failure
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A dog with a microphone

Scientists have almost cracked the secret language of animals. Here's what they've learned

We’re on the verge of decoding animal communication. Here’s what we’ve learned so far – and how AI could finally help us decipher their languages
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Abstract illustration of a person walking up a flight of stairs made of books into their own shadow, never ending purpose

How to find your life’s purpose: The biggest lessons from the world’s top experts

Science has shown that having a raison d’être is good for us
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Issue 426 of BBC Science Focus

New issue: On the Edge

I wonder how many discoveries in human history were made because someone thought: Let’s take a look around the corner? This time, the corner – figuratively speaking – is the region of space just beyond Pluto. More precisely, the area where the Sun’s influence begins to fade – the boundary of the heliosphere. Think of the heliosphere as a vast bubble, emanating from the Sun, that envelops our Solar System. Solar wind blasts out from the Sun in all directions, but eventually, it fizzles out the further away it gets. Where the winds are strong, they push back more harmful cosmic radiation gusting in from elsewhere in our Galaxy, shielding us. But the further these winds travel, the weaker they become, until, eventually, the solar particles become inconsequential. This is the place that scientists consider to be the edge of our Solar System and the beginning of the interstellar medium. Here, space roils with a cosmic zoo of exotic particles from strange places. This is exactly what NASA’s recently launched Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) wants to study. Its mission is to make sense of the stuff that’s arriving here from other parts of space, to understand how our Sun forms a barrier that protects us from the more harmful elements out there, and to chart what’s going on at the very edge of what we know. Get the full story in the November issue.
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Smashed clock on a cyan background.

Scientists could soon reverse daylight savings clock changes. Here’s why

Most of us look forward to the extra hour we get in bed every October, but researchers argue that changing the clocks twice a year harms our health.
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Caenorhabditis elegans, a free-living transparent nematode (roundworm), about 1 mm in length.

This tiny worm’s brain could transform artificial intelligence. Here’s how

‘Liquid neural networks’ promise smaller, smarter and more transparent AI – and they’re already running on devices from drones to self-driving cars
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A bright explosion in the middle of a group of galaxies

We might finally know what came before the Big Bang

Could all of this have happened before? And might it happen again?
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A pod of orcas, including a juvenile, swim in the warm waters of the Solomon Islands

Killer whales have now learnt a genius way to destroy great white sharks, new footage shows

Killer whales have a grisly new technique for hunting juvenile great white sharks – and scientists caught it on camera
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