Note to self: avoid dance-offs with sea lions

Don’t expect a second Sun anytime soon, though

This sleeping giant has plenty going on beneath the surface. Should we be worried?

The 18th-century priest had been stuffed with wood chips, twigs and fabric via his rectum

Iceland sits upon two continental plates – the Eurasian plate and the North American plate. These huge chunks of Earth’s surface are yawning apart at a pace of 2cm (just shy of 1in) every year. This movement creates fissures in Earth’s surface, like cracks in its shell. In Iceland, the Silfra fissure sits over an aquifer, where glacial meltwater gathers underground, and so this crack became a lake. It's the only body of water in the world that you can dive into and find yourself swimming between two tectonic plates. You can, almost, reach out and touch the Eurasian plate with one hand and the North American plate with the other. I couldn’t tell you why that appeals to me as an idea, as something to see before I die, but it does. While the fissure is around 60m (200ft) deep underwater, in my imagination, swimming through those waters would feel like Earth was opening up beneath me. The idea that there’s another world beneath us has a special kind of hold on humanity, one that’s almost as alluring as the idea that there’s life beyond Earth. The thing is, seismology is now in a place where it’s able to give us a detailed picture of what’s really going on deep inside the planet. And every time it does, our understanding of what it’s like down there changes. In this issue, we share what we've discovered.

Researchers are finally beginning to understand what's going on in our guts... and the best ways to soothe them.

A new leap in AI-generated content means deepfake detectors could be falling dangerously behind

Why do the 'Gates of Hell' in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert keep burning?

How a remote expedition to one of the most isolated places on Earth led to a once-in-a-century sighting