A tiny lizard dives and hides from predators

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Komodo dragons with iron-tipped teeth. Thirteen-foot pythons. Attacking crocodiles. Of the five major classes of vertebrates, reptiles often inspire the most fear.

But reptiles deserve our affection—and conservation dollars—as much as the mammals that may seem more charismatic. One in five reptile species is threatened.

I try to replace my anxiety about these creatures with awe. Reptiles are astonishingly diverse, with extraordinary adaptations, such as a tiny lizard in Costa Rica that has evolved a way to “dive,” according to new research.

The diving anole lives in the rainforests of Costa Rica, where it can create small air bubbles on its head as a source of oxygen when submerged. This ability allows the lizard to remain underwater for extended periods.

Unusual and unique behaviour, filmed by scientists as part of a new study, may help anoles hide from predators on land.

The little anole relies heavily on camouflage to hide from predators such as birds, snakes, mammals, and other lizards. And when camouflage fails, waiting out the threat underwater is an effective survival strategy.

Kaspar Hauser, a mysterious man considered by some to be the “Lost Prince,” died in 1833. Much less is known about his origin story.

Hauser appeared seemingly out of nowhere in what is now Nuremberg, Germany, on May 26, 1828, when he was about 16 years old. He was found wandering around the city’s marketplace without any identification and with an unsigned letter in his hand.

Nearly 200 years later, scientists have used new DNA analysis to solve a long-standing mystery surrounding Hauser’s alleged ties to the royal family.

Since 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe has been exploring the solar system and its surroundings.

The probe was the first spacecraft to cross the heliosphere—the bubble of the Sun’s magnetic fields and particles that extends beyond the orbits of the planets—and venture into interstellar space, the space between the stars. Along the way, Voyager 1 discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and two new moons of Jupiter, as well as five new moons orbiting Saturn.

Now the space agency may have found a way to allow the 47-year-old probe to communicate with Earth from billions of miles away.

NASA engineers have successfully fired up a set of engines that Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades. They could help keep the antenna pointed at Earth.

In other space news, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be able to vote by mail from low Earth orbit in the November election. The duo’s stay on the International Space Station has been extended to 2025 after arriving in June for a test flight of Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft. The trip was initially expected to last about eight days.

A flooded quarry near Bristol, England, is the testing ground for a bold plan to create an underwater habitat.

DEEP, a British ocean technology company, aims to build interconnected modules that will allow people to live and work at a depth of 656 feet (200 metres) for up to a month.

The 40-by-25-foot (12-by-7.5-meter) habitat, with enough space for three people to stay underwater for up to a week, will be ready to be placed in the water at DEEP’s UK campus in early 2025.

The company hopes its habitats will enable permanent human presence underwater, much like the International Space Station — which has allowed humans to live and work in space since 2000 — but in the ocean.

Vincent van Gogh’s masterpiece, The Starry Night, is a captivating work of art. It is also surprisingly scientifically accurate.

A new analysis of the painting by physicists in China and France suggests that the artist had a deep, intuitive understanding of the mathematical structure of turbulent flow, a common natural phenomenon observed in fluids such as flowing water, ocean currents and billowing storm clouds.

Scientists have determined that the sizes of the 14 spirals, or vortices, in “The Starry Night” and their relative distance and intensity are consistent with a physical law governing fluid dynamics known as Kolmogorov’s turbulence theory.

The physics hidden in Van Gogh’s depiction of the night sky may be one reason people are so interested in the painting.

— A bronze sword with the name of King Ramesses II inscribed with hieroglyphs was discovered in Egypt, and it still shines to this day.

— Helga and Zohar, two mannequins that flew aboard the Orion space capsule during the unmanned Artemis I mission in 2022, reveal how much radiation astronauts could be exposed to during future Artemis missions.

— A full super harvest moon shone brightly in the night sky earlier this week. A partial lunar eclipse, with a “bite” from the moon, was also visible to skywatchers.

— Earth will soon gain a new “mini-moon,” a recently discovered asteroid called 2024 PT5. The space rock will be temporarily captured by Earth’s gravity and orbit our world for several weeks, astronomers predict.

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