News

A giant “water battery” in the Swiss Alps is finally operational, 14 years after construction began. The Nant de Drance Hydropower Plant can store enough power to charge 400,000 car batteries. Until fusion (fingers crossed for the next few decades/centuries) is capable of solving all of our power needs, we have a problem to deal […]

The menu of life just grew a little as researchers have discovered that certain organisms can not only eat viruses, but thrive on them too. As a testament to the fact that life, uh, finds a way, it seems some living things have evolved to eat something that’s plastered just about everywhere – viruses. The […]

If you look up into the sky over the next few months, you can see an object last seen when Neanderthals walked the Earth. On March 2, 2022, astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility discovered a comet using a wide-field survey camera. The comet is estimated to complete an orbit of the Sun once every […]

In 1943, Thomas Watson, the president of IBM, famously predicted the world market for computers would top out at “maybe five” of the machines. He was wrong – you likely have more than that in your own house, let’s face it – but at the time, it made sense. After all, if computers were still […]

The world’s oldest lake can be found in southeastern Siberia where it’s believed to have existed for around 25 million years. As well as being the great great grandad of lakes, Baikal is also the deepest at 1,700 meters (5,600 feet). The impressive accolade means it’s home to around 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen […]

Depression is a difficult illness. Not only does it make you feel like crap, but like so many primarily mental illnesses, it also comes with a bucketful of misinformation and misconceptions surrounding it. Even medical specialists, whom you’d expect to be the authorities on the matter, are stumped by some aspects of the disease – […]

Despite all the talk about the need to curb our climate impact, carbon emissions from fossil fuels are set to reach a record high this year. So while 2022 may have resembled the trailer for a disaster movie, some experts believe we may have already bought a ticket for the feature film. Climate scientist Robert […]

In Greek mythology, Prometheus suffered appalling torment for stealing fire from the gods. So it’s slightly ironic that those gods, or at least the planets identified with their Roman counterparts, don’t actually have any fire. That applies to Apollo too. While the Sun is often referred to as fiery, the process of fusion that provides […]

When a boy and girl are conceived together, the female twin is exposed to more male hormones in the womb than when both twins are girls. This has allowed researchers to test the much-debated impact of these hormones prior to birth. They have found that there is a small, but statistically significant, negative impact on […]

Director James Cameron says he has conducted a scientific study, finally proving that (SPOILER ALERT) Jack had to drown at the end of the movie Titanic. In the movie, protagonists Jack and Rose fight against the odds to survive as the titular Titanic sinks into the Atlantic Ocean. Having fought off an angry fiancé, escaped […]

As you will know if you’ve ever suffered from dry skin, you will try just about anything to find some relief. Well, dermatological dilemmas affect our animal friends too, and some of the solutions that we may turn to ourselves can also be beneficial for them. The Japanese tradition of the yuzu bath has been […]

If you think navigating the human dating pool is hard, it’s time to get familiar with the sex lives of white-throated sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis). For these birds, any one individual can only mate with one-quarter of the species. Why? Because they decided to evolve two extra sexes on top of the two they already had. […]

You have always dreamed of being a world traveller. We don’t blame you. There is so much to see and do in the world, but the expense can put anyone off. However, thanks to this fabulous deal on a tried-and-trusted program and more, you can live your dreams, and start traveling for way less while […]

Lifelong learning is important. Not only does education improve cognitive brain function, but it improves your chances of getting the job you want. If you want to expand and improve your job prospects through the acquisition of new skills, but have worried about the how and when, we’ve got a great solution.  The Mindfulness Complete […]

Make no mistake: smoking tobacco is utterly terrible for you. Along with upping the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and strokes, the overwhelming majority of lung cancer cases are directly linked to smoking. Despite this risk, though, only 10 to 20 percent of lifelong smokers will actually develop lung cancer. Some people manage to smoke pack after pack of […]

“Foal slippers” is the cutesy name given to a rather grim feature of newborn horses, who are born with eponychium, a kind of hoof capsule that’s thought to protect the mother while the foal is in utero. Eponychium is actually present on the tiny feets of many hooved animals, including cows, deer, and even rhinos.  […]

It’s that time of year again when news outlets begin publishing their big lists of things that Nostradamus predicted would happen in the following year.  Last year, predictions included everything from famine causing people to eat their “fellow man” in despair after honey becomes more expensive than candles, to the robot uprising and human extinction. […]

Before fire, before the wheel, and perhaps even before language, humans had something that made these achievements possible. Psychologists call it “fluid intelligence”: the capacity to solve challenges we have never encountered before. It’s not unique to humans, as astonishing videos of crows encountering human-designed puzzles reveal, but it’s what makes us stand out. However, […]

There is a type of tinnitus that you may not have heard of, called pulsatile tinnitus. It can range from being a slight annoyance to a completely debilitating condition that makes it difficult to even sleep. People with this condition frequently hear a whooshing, throbbing, or thumping noise that is often noticeable when the person […]