A total solar eclipse seen by millions, a lost jungle city discovered by accident and hope for the almost extinct northern white rhino – science has given us a lot to get excited about this year.
One of the biggest news stories was about making space travel cheaper and easier, with Elon Musk’s Starship making a giant step towards humanity having a reusable rocket.
Of course it’s not all been positive. In bad news for the planet, for example, it is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the world’s warmest year on record.
But there has been a lot to celebrate. Here are seven of our favourite uplifting science stories of the year.
In October, Elon Musk’s Starship rocket completed a world first after part of it was captured on its return to the launch pad.
As beautiful as it is complex, the fly’s brain has more than 130,000 wires with 50 million intricate connections.
Imagine you’ve Googled something, you get to page 16 of the results and: “Hold on, is that a lost Mayan city?”
With human activity driving what conservation charity the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls a “catastrophic” loss of species, it can sometimes feel like we don’t hear an awful lot of good news about nature.
Tens of millions of people across Mexico, the US and Canada had their heads turned, literally by a total solar eclipse.
Millions once visited Sycamore Gap, the famous sycamore tree nestled in a gap in Hadrian’s Wall.
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