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Let us tell you a tale of murder most foul: many years ago, in a village called Wadhurst, in England, a newlywed couple were murdered in cold blood inside their cottage. The husband was killed first; the wife called for help, but her pleas were unintelligible through her injuries, and nobody came to their rescue. […]

All stars, including the Sun, have a finite lifetime. Stars shine by the process of nuclear fusion in which lighter atoms, such as hydrogen, fuse together to create heavier ones. This process releases vast quantities of energy which counteracts the ever-present inward pull of the star’s gravity. Ultimately, fusion helps stars to resist gravitational collapse. […]

Despite being around for more than 100 years, Ouija boards (a wooden board covered with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9 and the words “yes”, “no” and “goodbye”) continue to be a popular activity – especially around Halloween. To work, all participants must place their hands on the wooden pointer (or planchette) and […]

The presence of two new sublineages of COVID-19, designated as variants BQ.1 and XBB, have been confirmed in the UK, with more than 700 cases of BQ.1 and 18 of XBB being detected in the country recently. While neither sublineage is currently considered a variant of concern, experts have cautioned that they are likely highly […]

This article first appeared in Issue 1 of our new free digital magazine CURIOUS.  With the looming threat of a giant asteroid strike, Meryl Streep et al. jet off on a spaceship, their bodies cryonically frozen as they search for a new planet to colonize, and inevitably destroy as they did the last. In case you […]

A bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica) has been recorded flying 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) between Alaska and Ansons Bay, Tasmania, the longest non-stop migratory flight ever measured. The odyssey is not only a demonstration of birds’ staggering capabilities, but has given scientists and environmentalists a chance to highlight the threats to these winged adventurers’ survival. Godwits are […]

The Pillars of Creations have always brought awe and amazement to both astronomers and the general public. These light-years-long structures are the birthplace of many new stars and they always look incredible. JWST’s recent image in near-infrared is not just beautiful but allows us to peel back some of the dust layers to see the […]

If you were to take a sledgehammer to homes across the British Isles, you’d likely come across a few pairs of shoes stuffed inside the walls of old homes. Some of these “concealed shoes” will have sat in hiding for hundreds of years, and they were put there to carry out an important job: keeping […]

Scientists have been surprised to discover a vast river larger than the Thames that runs beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Building on previous observations, the latest study further shows how an interconnected network of rivers, lakes, and marine ecosystems can be found deep beneath this largely inaccessible and understudied chunk of the planet.  The river […]

Seismic signals collected over the last few years have led scientists to reconsider a previous idea about Mars. The planet is likely to still have magma, and it may plays an active role in changing the Martian surface. Many marsquakes appear to have been generated by a possible volcanic feature. If that is the case, […]

On the morning of October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union carried out the Tsar Bomba test, a hydrogen bomb that was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. The Tsar Bomba packed a punch of over 50 megatons, which is the equivalent of 50 million tons of conventional explosives. That’s 10 times more […]

“Girls, remember when you went through puberty, they told you that you were becoming a woman?” said comedian Mrs Hughes back in 2007. “You go through the ‘change of life’; they don’t tell you what you’re becoming.” Of course, ask anybody currently going through menopause, and they might have an answer for you: they’re becoming […]

Considering they’re meant to be some symbol of ultimate manliness, testicles are delicate little brats, aren’t they? They try to kill you if you get kicked a bit too hard; they can’t cope with a little heat or magnets; heck, you can’t even have too much of a good time if you don’t want to […]

Bones are wet. There, that’s something you now know. You might not like it, but when we’re alive our bones are stuffed with gooey marrow and riddled with vessels. So, it seems a bit odd, then, that the English idiom “bone dry” has become so well established. If you’re wondering why bones are wet, it’s […]

Spooky season is upon us, and it can be an especially scary time for pedestrians, it seems. Research has shown that Halloween is an exceptionally dangerous time for people to walk the streets – not because of undead ghouls, razor blades hidden in apples, or the annual return of Michael Myers, but because of car […]

It seems that the humble bumblebee has joined the ranks of animals that play just for fun, just like dogs and dolphins. Beekind has already been up to quite a lot in 2022, winning awards, getting recognized as fish, learning to distinguish odd and even numbers, and even lining up numbers in the right order. Now, […]

The clitoris is the only organ in the human body that exists for the sole purpose of providing pleasure; yet, until now, scientists had never counted the number of nerve endings that give rise to all that sensation. However, new research has revealed that despite its miniature size, the female bliss spot contains in excess […]

A straw designed to stop hiccups was released in 2021, beating traditional methods for how to stop hiccups in a study. However, if you’re sat at home Googling “how to stop hiccups”, you’re probably looking for a more instant solution than ordering in custom-made straws. Here, we discuss what hiccups even are, why we get […]

Earth’s magnetic field has protected life on Earth from solar radiation for as long as it has existed (which is longer than we thought) but it is not constant. It changes in many different ways that are not immediately easy to appreciate. Now, scientists have converted these fluctuations into sounds that we can hear, and […]

This week, Elon Musk discusses his plans post-Twitter takeover, the UK may have once been inhabited by ritualistic cannibals, and we’re warned about leaving those pesky fall leaves on the lawn. Elon Musk Outlines His Plans For Twitter And Reveals Why He Bought It With his Twitter takeover completed this week, Elon Musk outlined some […]