Faculty of Science

In some animals, the same species can occur in two or more color types, or morphs. New research may help solve the mystery of how this can occur despite the pressures of evolution.

A team of astronomers from UCT and the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) has identified a rare star that exploded around 1 500 years ago. At the time, the star would have outshone all the stars of the Orion constellation, reaching a similar brigh

Skeletal remains of dinosaurs show that they too were once affected by disease.  

Tributes have flowed in for UCT statistician Emeritus Professor Tim Dunne, who died in a car accident last weekend.

Nobody has ever seen one. They intrigue and, on some shady shelves of popular culture, even horrify. Matthew McConaughey escaped from one’s clutches in 2014’s Interstellar, but how much do we actually know about black holes?

Rising temperatures and more extreme, unpredictable climate events are making sustainable livelihoods tough for many people living in semi-arid regions of the world. To adapt, local communities, and especially farmers, use different strategies and resp

A group of international researchers, including UCT seismologist Dr Alastair Sloan, have shown that ruptures from earthquakes on thrust faults can jump between fault segments 50 km apart – 10 times farther than previously thought

Postdoctoral Square Kilometre Array (SKA) fellow Tana Joseph knows the value of firing a young imagination. That’s what happened to her at the age of 11 when the Cape Timespublished a series of long-anticipated pictures from

In 2003 Joan Byamugisha had just finished high school and was waiting to start her studies in medicine at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, when life threw her the ultimate curveball.

Identification of gene regulatory switches that turn bat genes on and off at crucial times during limb development, with implications for understanding how differences in the size, shape and structure of limbs are generated in mammals in general, inclu