“In this world nothing can be said to be certain,” wrote Ben Franklin in a letter to his pal Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789, “except death and taxes.” This tells us two things: firstly, that Franklin knew a quotable turn of phrase when he saw one, and secondly, that he lived before the invention of […]
Why Do We Shrink As We Age?
Hang around any supermarket for long enough and you’re sure to be approached by a mature shopper with a request to pass them a top-shelf item. And while it may seem impossible to imagine our future selves experiencing similar grocery woes, the reality is that your spinal column can start shrinking from as early as […]
How A New Brain Stimulation Technique Could Boost Memory Without Surgery
A new noninvasive brain stimulation technique that has the potential to help people living with memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease has been developed by scientists from the UK Dementia Research Institute. We spoke to the first author of the new paper, Dr Ines Violante, Senior Lecturer in Psychological Neuroscience at the University of Surrey, […]
Violent Video Games Don’t Increase Aggression And Might Actually Be Beneficial
Do video games make people more violent? It is a persistent belief among some people that they do, but the empirical evidence does not seem to support it. In fact, a new study has demonstrated that, contrary to making people more aggressive, playing violent video games can actually lower stress hormone levels in some players. […]
Why English Is Not The Official Language Of The US
Despite common belief, English is not the official language of the US. In fact, it is one of the exceptional countries on the planet that does not officially recognize any language. To understand why, we must travel back to the genesis of the US and the ambitious ideals of the Founding Fathers. Across the world, […]
Newly Discovered Astronomical Object Is Right On The Edge Of Two Extreme Possibilities
Astronomy is full of puzzling objects, and an international team of researchers has just added another juicy one: A dense compact object that has been spotted orbiting a pulsar. This in itself is not that groundbreaking – but the mass of this object is puzzling. It is in the so-called mass gap. Researchers are either […]
Watch This Soft, Snake-Like 3D-Printing Robot Grow As It Moves
The world of robotics is an exciting place, especially when it comes to those robots that take inspiration from nature as a means to create something unique and impressive. A self-3D-printing, snake-like robot that grows longer as it moves (stop sniggering) in a similar manner to a vine has been created, opening up a mind-boggling […]
“The Ultimate Catastrophe”: Can A Bomb Set The Atmosphere On Fire?
“When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that might destroy the entire world,” J. Robert Oppenheimer says to Albert Einstein at the end of Oppenheimer and the beginning of many Oppenheimer remixes. “What of it?” Einstein asks, to which Oppenheimer replies “I believe we did.” Oppenheimer is […]
200-Million-Year-Old “Problematic” Microfossils Finally Identified, And They’re Super Weird
The secret identity of a curious group of fossils has been revealed after palaeontologists sifted through almost 500 papers and got to watch a world-first microscope observation on YouTube. The fossils look a bit like a fingerprint that’s sloughed off, but they are, in fact, the encysted remains of a group of organisms that are […]
The Winter “Tripledemic”: Here’s What To Know
Happy respiratory virus season kids! We’re now in the depths of winter, which has brought with it a triple threat of respiratory diseases – the so-called “tripledemic”. But what does that actually mean? And how concerned should we be? We’ve got you covered. What is the tripledemic? The term tripledemic refers to the combination of […]
Meet The Yellow-Winged Bat, The False Vampire With Fake Nipples
The yellow-winged bat is a vibrant species that comes in brilliant yellow, found flapping across countries in Africa. They’re one of five species of false vampire bats from the continent, but that’s not the only fake thing about them. Yellow-winged bats (Lavia frons) are around 58–80 millimeters (2.3–3.1 inches) in size with the females typically […]
NASA Just Shot A Laser At India’s Moon Lander
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully shot a laser toward India’s Vikram lander on the Moon. However, this was not the first shot in a new space war but a carefully planned scientific experiment. The laser traveled about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from orbit to the surface of the Moon, hitting a target just 5 centimeters […]
Rare 75-Minute Warning Issued Before Asteroid Hit Earth’s Atmosphere Above Germany
The hunt is on to find meteorites from an object that hit the Earth’s atmosphere 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Berlin over the weekend. Although bits of rock would be most prized, scientists are also keen to collect as many photographs of the descent of the meteor 2024BX1 as possible. Central Europeans awake at […]
Mighty Megalodon Might’ve Been Long And Slender Rather Than A Monstrous Potato
Megalodon (Otodus megalodon) just got a tentative makeover thanks to new research that has estimated its body form. The study leaned on “three critical pieces of information” that have become available in recent years, and it paints a very different picture of this enormous bloodthirsty fish. The first piece in the tryptic puzzle was the […]
What Happens To Your Liver When You Quit Alcohol
According to Greek mythology, Zeus punished Prometheus for giving fire to humans. He chained Prometheus up and set an eagle to feast on his liver. Each night, the liver grew back and each day, the eagle returned for his feast. In reality, can a liver really grow back? The liver is the largest internal organ […]
Earth Isn’t The Only Planet With Seasons, But They Can Look Wildly Different On Other Worlds
Spring, summer, fall and winter – the seasons on Earth change every few months, around the same time every year. It’s easy to take this cycle for granted here on Earth, but not every planet has a regular change in seasons. So why does Earth have regular seasons when other planets don’t? I’m an astrophysicist […]
Comet Wild 2’s Surprisingly Varied Dust Reveals Our Solar System’s Early History
NASA’s Stardust mission to Comet Wild 2 has revealed its secrets very slowly. They’re finally coming together, however, and the results are showing that the outer Solar System in its early days was not the simple place previously thought. How one comet came to have dust from widely separated parts of the early Solar System […]
This Camera Will Spend 1,000 Years Taking An Image Of The Arizona Desert
How will the world change over the next 1,000 years? Unless you happen to hold the keys to time travel or immortality, it’s a question that none of us will live to know the answer to. But in Tuscon, Arizona, an experimental philosopher has created the Millennium Camera, a device that hopes to capture it […]
Hackers Could Use The Light Sensor On Your Phone To Spy On You
People put a lot of trust in their mobile phones; we use them to make payments, do work, and jot down last night’s weird dreams (thank you Notes app). But unfortunately, they can also be used to target us, and a new study from MIT researchers has revealed how hackers could take advantage of a […]
OSIRIS-REx Remaining Asteroid Bennu Sample Revealed And Photographed In Super High-Resolution Detail
After finally removing the final two fasteners on the canister and nearly 4 months after it was dropped in the Utah desert by OSIRIS-REx, the curation team at NASA has finally revealed the remaining sample of asteroid Bennu. The last two fasteners were removed on January 10, allowing the team to complete the last steps […]
