It’s pretty common to hear enthusiastic pet owners referring to their four-legged friends as “fur babies” – a moniker that can sometimes prompt scoffs from people living with the more traditional human type of infant. Sure, you love your doggo or your kitty, worn-out parents might say, but you simply can’t call them your “baby” […]
We Used To Think Diamonds Were Everywhere. New Research Suggests They’ve Always Been Rare
New research is shedding light on the tumultuous processes that give rise to diamonds, by homing in on a distinct purple companion found alongside them. Diamonds are highly prized for their qualities but also for their rarity. One way to look for them is to search for associated minerals that occur more commonly, such as […]
A Vast Viking Massacre May Have Spilt Blood In This Irish Cave
Something very strange went down in Dunmore Cave. Located in a quiet patch of Ireland, it’s said this cavern is filled with hundreds of human bones, along with dozens of silver and bronze items. Its story is still not fully explained, but some suspect that this was the sight of a Viking massacre over a […]
Tuneful Or Traumatic: Is This The Most Dangerous Musical Instrument Ever Made?
Even if you don’t recognize this odd-looking contraption, chances are you will have heard the sound it makes. That’s right, this is a musical instrument, invented by none other than Benjamin Franklin, and inspired by something you’ve almost definitely tried after a couple of sherries at Christmas. One of the seven Founding Fathers of the […]
Sexist, Racist Abuse Against Star Wars Actors Fueled By Sexism And Racism, Study Reveals
In 2017, a hitherto little-known actress named Kelly Marie Tran made history. As the character of maintenance worker Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Vietnamese-American actress had become the first ever Asian-American woman to have a major role in a Star Wars film. But with all the excitement came something much worse: […]
How The Maya Imagined The World Would End (Or Not)
Remember 2012? That was the year that Lonesome George died, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars, and Felix Baumgartner skydived from the edge of space. It was also the year of the biggest anti-climax in history as the world failed to end on December 21 – the date that, according to some, the Maya had […]
Many People Have No Idea What Allspice Is Made From, Apparently
If you take a look at search engine analytics, you’ll see that thousands of people each year are asking Google what allspice actually is and what it’s made of. To the surprise of many, it’s not actually a blend of numerous different aromatics and spices, but the ground-up berries of a tree found in tropical […]
Some Yeast Cells Sexually Reproduce And It’s Called “Shmooing”
Did you know that the yeast used to make beer and bread is capable of sexual reproduction? That’s right – these single-celled fungi can get it on in a process called “shmooing”. The term originates from the fact that, when they’re getting down to it, yeast cells resemble a shmoo: a blobby, rotund character created […]
GPT-4 Hires And Manipulates Human Into Passing CAPTCHA Test
The announcement of OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) model, GPT-4, has many people concerned – concerned for their jobs, concerned for how good it is at making content, and concerned for the ethics of such a powerful language model. But perhaps the most concerning part of it all was detailed in a report by OpenAI […]
The Last Of Us: Why Making Fungal Vaccines Is So Challenging
Warning: this article may contain spoilers. HBO’s hit TV adaptation of the popular video game The Last of Us has just aired its season one finale. Advertisement While there are some aspects of the series’ premise that are far from realistic (such as the possibility of a fungal pandemic), other elements are more grounded in […]
Club-Wielding Ancestors: Myth or Reality?
Growing up in the 1990s, I first encountered the ancient world through a video game called Prehistorik. The game resembled Super Mario, only the main character was not an Italian plumber but a shaggy caveman. Clad in a leopard-print loincloth, the fellow roamed his 2D world, searching for food and clobbering dinosaurs with a hefty wooden club. […]
Six Scientists Swallowed Lego Heads To Establish How Long It Takes To Poop Out
Pre-SHAT score. Post-SHAT score. FART score. You’d be familiar with these tests had you read Volume 55 of the Journal Of Paediatrics And Child Health. Why? Because in 2018, a group of researchers decided to find out how long it takes to poop Lego. Six pediatric health care professionals took on the challenge in a […]
The Strange Exploding Teeth Epidemic Of 19th Century America
In the USA in the 1800s, a number of patients went to see their dentists with an unusual complaint: their teeth had exploded in their mouths. Now not to go too layperson on you, but generally speaking, teeth are not known for their explosive capabilities. No country to date, we’d be willing to bet, has […]
This Is Why You Weigh Less At The Equator
Good news, there’s an easy (if a little expensive) way to lose weight – and it’s as easy as hopping on a plane. All you have to do is head closer to the equator, where you will weigh ever so slightly less than you do when closer to the poles. Assuming you lived at the […]
The Puerto Rico Gravity Anomaly: What Is Happening Beneath The Deepest Trench In The Atlantic?
On the boundary of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean is the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest in the Atlantic Ocean. Kilometers above it, the ocean’s surface is dipped slightly, pulled by an anomaly of Earth’s gravity. If you drop an object there, it will fall slightly faster than elsewhere on the planet or […]
What Is The Controversial Yonaguni Monument, Nicknamed “Japan’s Atlantis”?
Around 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Taiwan there is nothing but ocean, but look below the depths and there is a much stranger sight. Huge steps of stone apparently lead up a massive pyramid-like structure, the stone looking too shaped and uniform to be natural, while hammerhead sharks surround the curious area. This is […]
Notre-Dame Blaze Reveals First-Of-Its-Kind Iron Skeleton Propping Up Cathedral
The 2019 fire at Notre-Dame de Paris has revealed yet another of the cathedral’s secrets: the 12th-century Gothic-style building is the first such structure known to be constructed with an iron skeleton. The blaze devastated the iconic cathedral, which is still undergoing repairs almost four years later. Still, among the scorched ruins, a number of […]
One Million Octopuses To Be Farmed Annually If Spanish Farm Gets Approval
Octopuses are highly intelligent animals capable of advanced problem solving and learning, and have even exhibited behaviors that suggest they have personalities and feel pain, but they have one significant weakness: they’re considered a delicious delicacy across the globe. Now a proposal for the “world’s first intensive octopus farm” in Gran Canaria has scientists and […]
The Multiverse: Our Universe Is Suspiciously Unlikely To Exist – Unless It Is One Of Many
It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organised complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge? That’s a question physicists including me have tried to answer for […]
Castaway Depots: The Story Behind The Shacks That Saved Shipwrecked Sailors’ Lives
In the 1860s, a particularly tricky trade route from Australia and New Zealand to Europe saw an intolerable number of shipwrecks for boats that sailed upon it. In one (or should that be two?) particularly noteworthy incident(s), the surviving crews of two ships found themselves shipwrecked on New Zealand’s Auckland Island, unaware of their fellow […]
