Friday, 23 October 2026
International edition · English
Surprising but verified science: natural phenomena, geographic records, dark skies and the physiology of altitude.
14 articles · RSS
Curiosities Curiosity
That pleasant smell of the first drops after dry days has had a scientific name since 1964. Behind it are plant oils, soil bacteria and a surprisingly sensitive human nose.
Curiosities Curiosity
When the cold arrives, the Alpine marmot shuts itself in a burrow with its family and spends almost half the year in deep torpor. Its heart almost stops and it lives off the fat it built up in summer.
A snowflake is made of ice, and ice is transparent. So why is snow white and glaciers blue? The answer lies in how light bounces and is absorbed.
At sea level water boils at 100 °C, but not in the mountains. With less pressure, molecules escape sooner and water boils at a lower temperature. That is why pasta takes longer in a mountain hut.
Mountains seem eternal, but they move. India keeps pushing against Asia and the Himalaya gains a few millimetres every year, while ice, water and earthquakes shape it in the opposite direction.
Under your feet, in any forest, there are kilometres of fungal threads joined to tree roots. Thanks to them trees get water and nutrients, and some studies have detected exchanges between neighbouring trees.
Freezing and coming back to life, living without haemoglobin in sub-zero water or surviving the vacuum of space. Eight animals that push the limits of what we think is possible, explained with what science really knows.
Where a human struggles to breathe, some animals live, hunt and breed. A mouse on the summit of an Andean volcano, a spider above 6,000 metres and a goose that can fly over the Himalaya.
At 3,000 metres every breath carries around 30% less oxygen than at sea level. Your body reacts within minutes, adapts within days… and sometimes fails. This is what happens and what to do.
Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, but if you measure from the centre of the Earth, an Ecuadorian volcano wins. The reason: our planet is not a perfect sphere.
Some of nature's shows look like special effects, but they really happen and you can see them without scientific equipment. Ten phenomena, explained, with the best times and places to watch them.
More than a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way from home. These are the places where the sky is still as it was centuries ago, and how to make the most of them even without a telescope.
Also in Travel.
Our store · NMshop
Hiking footwear, jackets, backpacks, camping and climbing gear chosen for the mountains. Shipping worldwide.
NMshop is the outdoor gear store run by the publisher of Altavia.
