They were long derided as knuckle-draggers, but new discoveries are setting the record straight. As we rethink the nature of the Neanderthals, we could also learn something about our own humanity.
Scientists at NASA have announced the existence of a possible rare water ocean on a giant exoplanet scores of light years away and also a chemical hint of a sign of potential life.
Genetically modified food remains controversial, especially in Europe. But for some experts, it’s the best science-based method for a sustainable global food system amid biodiversity loss and a rising world population.
For the first time, phosphorus — the rarest of six elements upon which life as we know it depends — has been found in a tiny ocean-bearing moon in our solar system.
River’s wildlife is gingerly returning to areas that were once the site of heavy industry and its waters will soon become cleaner as the city spends billions to save it.
The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.
Under the watchful and resourceful eye of award-winning conservationist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda’s threatened mountain gorilla population has made an impressive recovery – as has the local community.
A Club of Rome study projects that on current trends the world population will reach 8.8 billion before the middle of the century, then decline rapidly. The peak could come earlier if governments take steps to raise average incomes and education levels.
Geologists will choose a place they believe best illustrates when a new epoch – which they have dubbed the Anthropocene – was born and its predecessor, the Holocene, came to an end.
The target is dominating at the biodiversity summit, but the problem of finding a balance between Indigenous peoples’ rights and conservation remains unresolved.
Rather than exhibiting rational consensus among dispassionate observers, Wikipedia mirrored the passion, emotion, and violence of Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011. Did Wikipedia help shape the political events of the Egyptian Revolution?
Speaking to animals has long been a fantasy. But now a dizzyingly ambitious project is harnessing all the power of modern science in an attempt to understand what whales say – and then hold conversations with them.
Towards the end of 2022, the human population on Earth is expected to reach eight billion. To mark the occasion, BBC Future takes a look at one of the most controversial issues of our time. Are there too many of us? Or is this the wrong question?
