Nature Hub

  By Rob Corp BBC News, Edite by - Amal Udawatta, IMAGE SOURCE Scientists have named a new group of butterflies after the villain Sauron from the Lord of the Rings novels. Experts hit on the name Saurona because the black rings on the insect's orange wings reminded them of the all-seeing eye described in JRR Tolkien's books. The Natural History Museum in London hopes the unusual title will draw attention to the species and help generate more research. Two species of butterfly have been added to the newly named Saurona genus. Saurona triangular and Saurona aurigera are the inaugural members of the group but it's expected many more species will join them. The name was picked by Dr Blanca Huertas, curator of the butterflies at the museum, who is part of an international team who described the new genus in a paper published in the scientific journal Systematic Entomology. A group of 30 scientists from around the world have spent a decade studying the butterfly subtribe Euptychi

  By Jonathan Amo   - BBC Science Coraspondent, Edited by -Amal Udawatta IMAGE SOURCE, UPFLOW/A.FERREIRA Image caption, The Upflow ocean-bottom seismometer project is led from University College London, UK The massive volcanic blast in the Pacific last year was felt 18,000km away on the other side of the world, on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The cataclysmic eruption of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai on 15 January 2022 sent pressure waves through Earth's atmosphere that connected with the sea surface and triggered 50 highly sensitive seismometers placed 5,000m under water on the seabed. It was one of a number of intriguing phenomena picked up by the instrument network in the Azores-Madeira-Canary Islands region. Scientists, led from  University College London , had set up the stations primarily to detect earthquakes. The goal is to use the signals from ground motions to image the interior of the planet, to trace the great upwellings of magma of the type that built the islands of

  By Georgina Rannard Climate and science reporter, BBC Edited by Amal Udawatta IMAGE SOURCE, ANDREW CROOK Image caption, Andrew runs a fish and chip shop and says many takeaways will face higher costs A ban on some single-use plastics will come into force in England from October, the government has announced. To tackle the growing plastic problem, takeaways, restaurants and cafes must stop using single-use plastic cutlery, plates and bowls. Green groups welcomed the move, but said it could go further to address packaging being sent to landfill. The British Takeaway Campaign told BBC News that businesses need more support to implement it. Fish and chips restaurants and other takeaways will become more expensive as small companies will be forced to pass on higher costs of packaging to consumers, suggests Andrew Crook, who runs a fish and chip shop in Lancashire and is deputy chair of the British Takeaway Campaign. England uses about 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery, mostly plasti