Friday, 23 October 2026
International edition · English
Tag
Everything about science on Altavia: 14 articles including news, guides, routes and features.
14 articles
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.
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.
The equatorial Pacific is much warmer than normal and forecast centres point to a very strong, perhaps historic, El Niño. We explain what it is, what is expected and what it could mean for the snow season.
The European Copernicus service ranked 2024 as the warmest year on record and the first to exceed the 1.5 °C threshold. Have we already broken the Paris Agreement? Not exactly. Here is why.
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.
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.
A glacier is a balance between the snow it gains and the ice it loses. When the books come out in the red year after year, it retreats. We explain why this is happening almost everywhere and what it means for us.
In summer, some snowfields in the Alps, the Pyrenees or the Arctic turn pink. It is not dust or pollution: it is microscopic algae with their own 'sunscreen'. And their colour has consequences.
Vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered... Behind each label are very specific scientific criteria. We explain how the world's most widely used tool for measuring extinction risk works.
Polyester fibres above 8,000 metres, particles raining from the sky in remote Pyrenean valleys, plastic in Antarctic snow. The mountains are not safe from plastic, and part of the problem is what we wear.
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