People who are isolated from others do worse on cognitive tests. sfam_photo/Shutterstock Why do we get a buzz from being in large groups at festivals, jubilees and other public events? According to the social brain hypothesis, it’s because the human brain specifically evolved to support social interactions. Studies have shownContinue Reading
Jonny Bairstow in full flow. Nic Redhead via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Jonny Bairstow played the “innings of a lifetime” when he scored the second fastest century by an England cricketer in a Test match to help his team beat New Zealand, currently the world’s top-rated Test team. To findContinue Reading
As the latest Jurassic World film hits cinemas, we’re re-running a story from The Conversation Weekly’s archives about what dinosaurs really looked liked – and how our understanding of their appearance keeps evolving. Since the release of the first Jurassic Park film nearly 30 years ago, scientists have learnt aContinue Reading
In physics, experiments to answer the big questions can take decades to run—and might not produce any findings at all.Continue Reading
The RoboFly University of Washington Allow me to take you on a trip down my memory lane. As a young lad, a film I saw captured my imagination: Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 release about people shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the body of an injured scientist to repairContinue Reading
Gaia mapping the stars of the Milky Way. ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier, CC BY-NC The European Space Agency’s (Esa) Gaia mission has just released new data. The Gaia satellite was launched in 2013, with the aim of measuring the precise positions of a billion stars. In addition to measuringContinue Reading
Testing, vaccinating, and contact tracing can control the virus in Europe and North America—unless complacency allows it to take hold.Continue Reading
Many types of people feel disengaged with technology Shutterstock We take it for granted that technology brings people closer together and improves our access to essential products and services. If you can’t imagine life without your smartphone, it’s easy to forget that people who can’t or don’t want to engageContinue Reading
We don't know how much information the human brain can store. agsandrew/Shutterstock READER QUESTION: I am 59 years old, and in reasonably good health. Is it possible that I will live long enough to put my brain into a computer? Richard Dixon. We often imagine that human consciousness is asContinue Reading
The galaxy cluster Abell 520, with suspected dark matter highlighted in blue. NASA It has been more than 50 years since astronomers first proposed “dark matter”, which is thought to be the most common form of matter in the universe. Despite this, we have no idea what it is –Continue Reading
