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A dust devil looks a bit like a tornado, but is weaker and rarely lasts more than about a minute. It is a twisting column of warmed air scooting across sun-heated ground, made visible by the dust that it lofts upwards. Although usually benign, occasionally dust devils can kill.

Harsh lockdowns might be no more, but Oxford's Word of the Year shows people might still be suffering a hangover from COVID restrictions.

The term was described as "a 2022 expression."

It’s on the shortlist for Oxford University Press’s word of the year. But what on earth does it signify?

"Metaverse" is competing against two other terms for the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year, plus NFT news from Johnnie Walker and Mattel.

Three ‘words’ selected by Oxford University Press – ‘goblin mode’, ‘#IStandWith’ and ‘metaverse’ – can now be voted for online

Egyptologist Dr Bob Brier has written a new book marking the 100th anniversary of archaeologist Howard Carter and his team's discovery of the boy king's tomb in 1922

How many intelligent civilisations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on September 2 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to estimate this. The Drake equation, dating from a stage in his career when he…

A new research collaboration between Harvard University and Oxford University Press aims to compile the first fully-formed dictionary of African American English.

Nasa has recently announced US$600,000 (£495,000) in funding for a study into the feasibility of sending swarms of miniature swimming robots (known as independent micro-swimmers) to explore oceans beneath the icy shells of our Solar System’s many “ocean worlds”. But don’t imagine metal humanoids swimming frog-like underwater. They will probably…

Enthusiasts lit up social media recently with images of what appeared to be a “doorway” into a hillside on Mars. Was it, some wondered, evidence that the red planet could be, or have been, inhabited by aliens? The “door” was imaged by Nasa’s Curiosity rover on May 7 on the…