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Should we be allowed to charge for sex? Do we have a right to sell our organs? And is our DNA our own property? The level of autonomy we ought to have over our flesh and bones is far from clear cut, and as innovations in biotechnology continue to transform our moral and economic relationships […]

When it comes to chronicling the past, it seems there are basically two ways discoveries are made: either they’re the result of years of painstaking, devoted work… or they’re accidentally found in a drawer somewhere after eons of collecting dust. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The new discovery of two scientific treatises by Apollonius, the ancient […]

A seismologist working at the US Geological Survey (USGS) may have solved an old mystery involving supposed hauntings in Charleston, South Carolina. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE From around the mid-20th Century CE, people have told stories of a ghost haunting the railroad track between Charleston and Summerville in South Carolina. Though there are a number […]

He does not look overly enthusiastic as I look down on his body, but then again, I doubt anyone would be if they had every conceivable weapon of their age cutting, poking, stabbing, slicing, gouging, ripping, and shattering their body. I say “and” here, because this individual is not being assaulted by just one object […]

A team of scientists from King’s College London, Swansea University, and collaborators in Chile say that they have found a way to reverse cracking in bitumen, paving the way toward the sci-fi dream of self-healing roads. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Potholes are a bit of a problem, causing damage to cars at a cost of […]

Google’s parent company Alphabet has redrafted its policies guiding its use of artificial intelligence (AI), doing away with a promise to never use the technology in ways “that are likely to cause overall harm”. This includes weaponizing AI as well as deploying it for surveillance purposes. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The pledge to steer clear […]

It’s an inescapable reality that human and non-human cases of avian influenza H5N1, or “bird flu”, have been on the up in the US. With every announcement of a new outbreak often comes fresh concern about the potential danger it poses to humans. But how concerned do we need to be? Will it start spreading […]

Having a cold sucks – and so, desperate for any relief from the constant coughing and annoyingly drippy nose, people have turned to all sorts of bizarre remedies. From onions in your socks to flushing your nose out, let’s find out whether some of them really work. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Before we get started […]

When the first complete Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, the 3 billion base pairs it contained helped to fill in some of the gaps in our own species’ ancient history, revealing a wild past colored by prehistoric love affairs with our extinct relatives. As a result, all present-day populations outside Africa continue to carry […]

A former deep-sea treasure hunter and research scientist jailed for refusing to disclose the location of 500 missing gold coins may soon be released, after a judge ended the charge, stating he “no longer is convinced that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance.”  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE In 1857, the SS Central America sank […]

Up until the recent discovery of the asteroid 2024 YR4, which at the time of writing has an estimated 1.6 percent chance of hitting us next decade, the most dangerous space rock to us was asteroid Bennu. Bennu was visited and sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and data from it is revolutionizing our understanding of the […]

Microplastics are everywhere, and we mean everywhere. In fact, a new study suggests there’s a chance that if you’re thinking about this statement, then the squishy wrinkled organ doing that thinking may have a worryingly abundant amount of micro- and nanoplastics in it. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE In recent years, scientists have become increasingly worried […]

Travel across a country and you’ll come across a vast array of dialects in humans – but what about one of our closest-living relatives, chimpanzees? A new study appears to show that they too have different “dialects” across groups, but we might also be triggering them to change. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE To find this […]

It’s a good day to be a marine biologist: a bundle of new species has been found living among the deep-sea methane seeps off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Scientists led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have collected the results of five research expeditions and 63 submersible dives to […]

We are just over two weeks out from the beginning of Trump’s second presidency, and scientific research in the United States is in complete disarray. A series of executive orders that have been described as illegal, violating the constitution, and segregationist have sown chaos in the many scientific funding agencies across the US.    ADVERTISEMENT […]

Was Jesus a man, a myth, or something in between? While we can’t comment on supernatural claims of water-walking and red wine alchemy, many historians agree that Jesus was a living, breathing person who walked the Earth. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Let’s assume, as most scholars do, that Jesus H Christ was an influential Jewish […]

History is replete with notorious experiments which, quite rightly, would not be performed today. The “Little Albert” experiment takes a prominent place in the list, alongside the infamous Milgram experiment and the Monster Experiment. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The Little Albert experiment was actually inspired by another horror show you may be familiar with: Pavlov’s […]

In the McMurdo Sound region of Antarctica, there lives a species of sponge known as the giant volcano sponge (Anoxycalyx joubini). Though aging the individual animals is troublesome, they may be amongst the oldest animals on the planet. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Sponges, though not the most thrilling of animals in terms of their shenanigans, […]

Working out how smart or intelligent your partner is, in any given task, is a tricky skill at the best of times. This type of intelligence to have forethought about the state of mind of others is something seen in people but not in non-human apes. It is known as “the theory of mind” and […]

In ancient times, before we really understood where diseases came from, illnesses were often blamed on some mysterious unseen malevolence in the air. Unsure of how to combat this invisible and omnipresent evil, people would turn to magic and prayer to save them, adorning themselves with charms and incantations to ward off the danger. ADVERTISEMENT […]