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If you think your own password habits are bad (adding the number “1” after your cat’s name), you will be reassured and horrified to learn that the US nuclear arsenal was allegedly much less secure during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Assuming you aren’t Dr Strangelove, you would probably like […]

In sports, coin tosses are often used to decide who goes first, or pick who goes to bat for the first part of the game.  It seems fair. You’d assume that as coins have two sides and you introduce a random element (flipping the coin and catching it), the odds of it coming up with […]

Some species are well known for the distances they are able to cover: from birds that fly pole to pole, butterflies making incredible journeys, and silky sharks breaking records, these feats never fail to impress. New research has highlighted an individual humpback whale that has traveled one of the longest migration routes ever seen, though […]

It’s that time of year once again: festivities, merriment, twinkling lights, goodwill to all humankind, and the annual Christmas Challenge of the UK’s national intelligence agency. This year, seven puzzles have been designed by a team of puzzling experts who work at GCHQ, the UK security agency that’s tasked with signals intelligence. Advertisement The challenges […]

The only fish species on the Great Barrier Reef to care for their offspring as juveniles has found a win-win approach to protecting their young from parasites. As well as drastically reducing a major source of mortality in their children, the adult spiny chromis damselfish (Acanthochromis polyacanthus) gets to supplement their diet. You may need to […]

If you’ve ever done any kind of DIY – literally, any kind at all, from car maintenance to building a desk to changing the batteries in your vintage GameBoy – you’re probably familiar with the crosshead screw. It is, in various forms, one of the most popular types of threaded fastener in the world – […]

An unidentified disease has reportedly affected over 400 people in the rural Kwango Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since October 2024. Some estimates have placed the number of deaths so far in excess of 140, although experts acknowledge the challenge of getting a true sense of the scale of the issue.  […]

Ask any random person for an example of a fractal, and there are a few answers you can expect. The first, obviously, is “Who are you? Stop asking me math questions lady, this is a Wendy’s”. The second, though, may well be this: The Mandelbrot set. It’s called the Mandelbrot – or more properly, Mandelbröt […]

A new-to-science predator has been identified from the hadal depths of the Atacama Trench, a first for this island-like ecosystem in the Southeast Pacific. Here, scientists had loaded bait traps with some chicken in an effort to lure in some scavengers and instead found themselves with a whopping great predatory amphipod– something that had been […]

From the largest planets to comets, there are a variety of worlds in the Solar System that experience aurorae. On Earth, the Northern and Southern Lights are caused by electrically charged particles from the solar wind. They get carried along our planet’s magnetic field to higher latitudes before slamming into the atmosphere. That collision makes […]

A new paper has set out ways that we can test the anthropic principle, or whether the universe has been “finely tuned” for life. Surprisingly, it may be possible to have answers to this age-old question in a pretty short timescale. There is a problem (or not, for fans of being alive) within physics, in […]

China’s got a problem. The southern regions of the country are relatively humid and well-watered, yet much of the north suffers from parchingly arid conditions. This issue has become increasingly burdensome as a third of the nation’s vast population is concentrated in the dry northern basins. A bold solution is being delivered in the form […]

The universe is undergoing an accelerated expansion. The so-called Hubble constant indicates the rate of that expansion, and there are a few ways for astronomers to measure it. But there is a major problem. The main methods profoundly disagree with each other. This is the saga of the Hubble tension, challenging everything we know (and […]

If you’ve watched enough cartoons, you have probably noticed something odd about the characters within them. An awful lot of them have only three fingers and a thumb, and a lot of them are wearing gloves. The Simpsons have three fingers and a thumb, Mickey Mouse has the same, and Spongebob Squarepants too; you name […]

The Amazon River snakes around for at least 6,400 kilometers (3,977 miles), yet it is not crossed by a single bridge (at least officially). Given humankind’s strong tendency to reshape natural landscapes and traverse the seemingly impossible, this anomaly begs the question – why? One of the main reasons is that there isn’t much demand […]

We all know that the ocean holds many mysterious creatures, from incredible whales to sponges that can live for 11,000 years. One such species deserves some more recognition: it’s time to meet the bowmouth guitarfish. What Is A Bowmouth Guitarfish? Bowmouth guitarfish (Rhina ancylostoma) have a striking unusual appearance: though they appear to have the […]

Having lived alongside humans since the Ice Age, dogs have unsurprisingly picked up a few of our tricks, with a knack for communication being among their top talents. According to new research, these conversational skills may be significantly more advanced than we previously thought, as some dogs appear able to combine multiple words in order […]

In case you have missed it, Google announced some pretty impressive achievements in the field of quantum computing on Monday. Tucked away in the announcement by the lead of Google Quantum AI was a suggestion that its quantum computer may have achieved these feats with the help of calculations performed in a different universe. According […]

Traditional chemistry is so last year. Welcome to the world of mechanochemistry, where reactions that were thought impossible – indeed, that are impossible when attempted in more conventional ways – become possible, and where brand-new avenues of exploration are opening up.  Even if the last time you entered a chemistry lab was way back in high […]

Earth’s rocky crust can sometimes seem like a drab, dull, and lifeless place (sorry, geologists, we know it’s more interesting than that… sometimes). However, with a drill, a microscope, and a bit of luck you’ll see that beneath the surface lies a hidden world of history and life.  The term “endolith” – deriving from the […]