The padlock icon which appears in most internet browser address bars. Robert Avgustin/Shutterstock Do you know what the padlock symbol in your internet browser’s address bar means? If not, you’re not alone. New research by my colleagues and I shows that only 5% of UK adults understand the padlock’s significance.Continue Reading
DimaBerlin/Shutterstock Whether you’re an influencer, an occasional poster, or just a lurker, you likely spend more time than you’d like on social media. Globally, working-age people with internet access now spend more than 2.5 hours per day on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook or X (Twitter). Social media use canContinue Reading
Rattana/Shutterstock Jurassic Park is arguably the ultimate Hollywood blockbuster. Aside from the appeal of human-chomping dinosaurs, tense action sequences and ground-breaking cinematography, its release in 1993 was a movies-meet-science milestone. As global audiences were soaking up the gory action, the premise of the movie – extracting DNA from fossil insectsContinue Reading
The restored image of Earthrise. A high quality black and white image was coloured using hues from the original colour photos. Image Credit: NASA, Apollo 8 Crew, Bill Anders; Processing and License: Jim Weigang, CC BY-SA The recent death of Frank Borman, commander of Nasa’s Apollo 8 mission in 1968,Continue Reading
cono0430 / Shutterstock There are signs of AI everywhere, it’s behind everything from customer service chatbots to the personalised ads we receive when browsing online. However, we remain largely unaware of the hidden algorithms doing the heavy legwork behind the scenes. We are currently working on a research project focusingContinue Reading
Artstore/Shutterstock The Doomsday Clock, with its hands hovering close to midnight (“doomsday”), is a symbolic device that is designed to warn the world how close it is to catastrophe. Midnight is said to represent the point at which the Earth becomes uninhabitable by humanity. The clock dates back to theContinue Reading
Bystrov/Shutterstock Imagine the future. Where is it for you? Do you see yourself striding towards it? Perhaps it’s behind you. Maybe it’s even above you. And what about the past? Do you imagine looking over your shoulder to see it? How you answer these questions will depend on who youContinue Reading
Dr Norbert Lange/Shutterstock One of the most startling scientific discoveries of recent decades is that physics appears to be fine-tuned for life. This means that for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall within a certain, very narrow range. One of the examples of fine-tuning whichContinue Reading
Scientists have dated the birth of the Solar System to about 4.57 billion years ago. About 60 million years later a “giant impact” collision between the infant Earth and a Mars-sized body called Theia created the Moon. Now, new research suggests that the remains of the large object that collidedContinue Reading
Wherever you view it from on Earth, it's the same Moon. Fernando Astasio Avila / Shutterstock Big Brother has always chosen its contestants for entertainment value rather than for intellectual debate. This was recently highlighted in a discussion started on the programme by dental therapist Chantelle, who suggested there mustContinue Reading
