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Imagine a sprinkler system with S-shaped arms. The water comes out and the sprinkler moves – so far, it seems pretty straightforward. Now imagine the complete opposite version: Your sprinkler is submerged and sucking in water. The question that physicist Richard Feynman asked was the following: in which direction does it rotate? We now have […]

Plants have been up to some pretty weird tricks already this year and now a tree fern species (Cyathea rojasiana) has joined the party. Well, in order to join in it first has to die and then come back from the dead to help its mother. Let us explain. Cyathea rojasiana is a tree fern […]

The term zero-G has been, for a long time, a popular way to explain the apparent lack of gravity in space. But it is an incorrect term. There’s nowhere in the universe where there is zero gravity. The term microgravity is actually what is now being used to more correctly describe what is going on. […]

Astronomers at The Virtual Telescope Project have captured incredible footage and images of asteroid 2024 BJ as it made a close encounter with Earth on Saturday.  The asteroid whizzed past the Earth, making its closest approach of 353,000 kilometers (220,000 miles), just 10 days after its discovery. At its closest approach, the asteroid was around […]

Despite weighing around 25 tons each, the enormous sarsen stones of Stonehenge were somehow transported over incredible distances when the monument was constructed almost 5,000 years ago. The majority of these colossal monoliths came from a spot known as the West Woods, around 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the site itself, yet new research has […]

With 200 billion trillion stars (ish) stars in the universe and the 13.7 billion years which have elapsed since it all began, you might be wondering where all the alien civilizations are at.  This is the basic question of the Fermi paradox, the tension between our suspicions of the potential for life in the universe […]

The speed and voracity with which our innate immune system responds to invaders is great – until it turns against us. That happens in autoimmune conditions like lupus, and researchers have been trying to better understand how the system gets so out of control. In a new study, not only have scientists identified a new […]

Scientists have had to stop using the Corbassière glacier in Valais, Switzerland, as a record of the changing climate, because the climate has changed too much.  Much of what we know about the Earth’s climate, we have learned from ice. Glaciers capture bubbles of air that reveal atmospheric concentrations of gasses when the ice formed. […]

The rate at which the rare but crucial quantum phenomenon known as tunneling occurs has been measured experimentally for the first time, and found to match theoretical calculations. The theoretical estimates in this area had been regarded as highly uncertain, so confirmation in one specific case allows for greater confidence in estimating the frequency of […]

You may have heard of the Fermi Paradox, but if you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Given the high probability that alien life exists out there in the universe, why has nobody got in touch?  If there are so many other civilizations out there, possibly at far more advanced stages than we are […]

Issue 19 (February 2024) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. In This Issue… Advertisement OUR COVER STORY: Is Hypnosis Real? Or is it all just an act? Find out […]

The 12,000-year-old prehistoric site of Göbekli Tepe has become showered with attention in recent years – and rightly so – but it’s lesser known that southern Turkey is also home to a very similar “sister site” known as Karahan Tepe. Located just over 45 kilometers (27 miles) east of Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe was first discovered […]

A  study by psychologists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology claims to have found the most effective flirting techniques for men and women. The researchers looked at college students in the US and Norway, all of whom were heterosexual. The volunteer participants were sent questionnaires, asking them to rate how effective 40 different […]

The Lake Victoria of today is relatively young at just 16,000 years old, but within this tiny timeframe, some 500 different species of cichlid fish have managed to evolve here. Remarkably, this explosion of diversity is primarily thanks to hybrids born as a result of inter-species breeding. In a study, scientists at the University of Bern, […]

Zealandia has been kicking about for a good 60 million years, having separated from the supercontinent Gondwana around that time. It’s also almost entirely submerged underwater and wasn’t even formally recognized as a continent until 2017. But now, it’s experiencing something of a resurgence – at least in a research sense – becoming the first […]

A mystery that has dogged materials science for 200 years has finally been solved. A mineral found in many ancient rock formations had stubbornly resisted the efforts of scientists to grow it in the lab, even though they could recreate the conditions they thought formed it in nature. Now, a team has cracked the problem, […]

Animals that can change color are observed more often than you might think across different species, habitats, and even body parts. While reindeer have eyes that change color in winter and fish can turn black with anger, documentary makers have witnessed the Labord’s chameleon (Furcifer labordi) putting on a spectacular display at the end of […]

Plastic shells have become a fashion trend for hermit crabs across the world. In a new study, scientists have looked into how often hermit crabs are using plastic and other human-made materials as their shells, concluding that it is likely to be a global problem across many different species. Researchers at the University of Warsaw […]

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has taken its final flight across the dusty plains of Jezero Crater. The first flying vehicle on another world, Ingenuity spent almost 1,000 days on the Red Planet carrying out test flights and helping its rover companion Perseverance navigate the Martian terrain, 33 times longer than NASA had initially planned. It […]