Avi Loeb has urged NASA to redirect the Curiosity Rover to examine a mysterious 20-centimetre cylindrical object spotted in Gale Crater. While likely debris from the rover’s landing system, its origin remains unconfirmed. Loeb argues that investigating it should take priority over routine exploration, though NASA has not yet responded publicly.

The world is full of surprising facts about the Earth and how we interact with it, even when we don’t understand or appreciate what happens around us. We use a bit of science to sort out the millions of bits of information our feet feel every second. There are many surprising facts about nature, including that you share more DNA with a banana than you may realise. Several things around us are surprising, including the strength of a single human hair and the vast space in the solar system. The following story has amazing facts about the body, the animals that live on Earth with us, and about space.

Once a year, at a single precise instant, our tilted, spinning planet reaches a state of geometric equilibrium, and the whole living world responds.

Spiders progress through three stages—egg, spiderling, and adult—without metamorphosis, growing instead through moulting, a process that leaves them briefly vulnerable. Spiderlings disperse through remarkable methods like ballooning, while adulthood brings reproduction and, often, death for males. This biological cycle, grounded in real science, offers a fitting metaphor for transformation, briefly echoed in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.