When NASA’s Kepler telescope looked into space, it was also looking back in time. Locked into a heliocentric orbit, Kepler was set to gradually trail the Earth so that our magnetosphere wouldn’t affect its mission. The result was that Kepler had a unique view of our universe. Which is how we know that a billion … Continue reading
Lavinia Lovie Richards knows what it is to wake a sleeping language. The last native speaker of Barngarla, elder Moonie Davis, died back in the 1960s. He took with him a beautiful and complex language and was reportedly the last of his Aboriginal tribe to know songs that called the sharks and dolphins to chase … Continue reading
Armidale, Australia – What can white cotton underwear tell you about the health of the soil in your farm or garden? Quite a lot, it turns out. Hundreds of people – from farmers to schoolchildren – are burying their cotton underwear in their back gardens to dig up eight weeks later as part of a … Continue reading
Southern Province, Sri Lanka – Lochana is 10 years old. Every morning, he gets up and lights an incense stick, which he places in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw parked outside the family home in Sri Lanka‘s coastal Southern Province. The vehicle is a bright shade of pink and as the fragrant smoke fills the interior, Lochana says a … Continue reading
It is difficult to predict when the elephants will come. As darkness falls around Udawalawe National Park, the 52 villages that speckle its borders go on alert. Thin wire fences hum with the threat of electricity. Across the dry zone, farmers climb up into rudimentary treehouses overlooking their paddy fields. They must try … Continue reading
Bogota, Colombia – Finding Anna Karenina in the rubbish would change Jose Alberto Gutierrez’s life. It was 20 years ago, but Jose still remembers first glimpsing the Russian classic by Leo Tolstoy in the rubbish outside a home in Bogota’s Bolivia neighbourhood. The rubbish collector loaded his truck with the rest of the waste, but took … Continue reading
Edward de Alwis was admitted as a 14-year-old to the Hendala Leprosy Hospital. He has been a patient there for some 75 years. [Smriti Daniel/ Al Jazeera] Hendala, Sri Lanka – Edward de Alwis was born in 1928, the youngest of nine siblings. He was only 14-years old when a Public Health Inspector on a … Continue reading
Colombo, Sri Lanka – In 2006, a Russell’s viper sank one fang into Sanath Weeraratne’s left hand. Weeraratne immediately started to bleed profusely as the anticoagulant properties in the venom took effect. He knew what could come next: more bleeding from the rectum and the gums and blood-stained vomit. The blood could seep into the … Continue reading
For a change, Kevin Sanders has decided to let someone, or more accurately, something else count the apples in his orchard. This isn’t the first time his idyllic farm down in Australia’s Yarra Valley has played host to robots and their handlers, so Sanders knows what to expect. Moving soundlessly down the corridors between trees, … Continue reading
Puhudiwula, Sri Lanka – In the district of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, Puhudiwula is a village of abandoned wells. Though new and well-built, these wells can be found in every garden, costing around 100,000 rupees ($700) to build. The villagers, however, will not drink or even cook with the water, which they believe is driving … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 