Did Eating Meat Really Make Us Human?
For decades, scientists thought that being more carnivorous set our ancestors along their evolutionary path. New evidence casts doubt on this theory.Continue Reading
2022-01-27
Everything we see is a mash-up of the brain’s last 15 seconds of visual information
Ryger/Shutterstock Our eyes are continuously bombarded by an enormous amount of visual information – millions of shapes, colours and ever-changing motion all around us. For the brain, this is no easy feat. On the one hand, the visual world alters continuously because of changes in light, viewpoint and other factors.Continue Reading
2022-01-26
Curious Kids: will time ever stop?
Olga_Kuzmina/Shutterstock Will time ever stop? – Casandra, aged 11, Epsom, UK Time began when the universe did. How – and if – the universe ends will determine whether time will end as well. We think the universe started out squeezed into an infinitely small space. For some reason we doContinue Reading
2022-01-25
Why you can probably keep milk longer than you think (and why you should)
Tetiana Maslovska/Shutterstock Around one-third of the food produced globally every year never gets eaten. This waste often occurs along the supply chain before the food even reaches us. But consumers who throw away food because it’s gone bad, or because they think it may have gone bad, are also responsibleContinue Reading
2022-01-23
Underwater volcanoes: how ocean colour changes can signal an imminent eruption
The scale of a recent volcano eruption took the people of Tonga by surprise. Scientists monitoring the submarine volcano, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, were likewise caught off-guard, failing to foresee an explosion which would unleash a Pacific-wide tsunami. The scale of the eruption was hailed as a “once in a millenium”Continue Reading
2022-01-22
Evolution: how Victorian sexism influenced Darwin’s theories – new research
Peacocking isn't the only way to attract mates. Andrey Bocharov/Shutterstock Sex is an expensive business, biologically speaking. Finding a suitable mate takes time and energy. Offspring are also a huge investment of resources. But sex does offer a rewarding possibility: children who are fitter than their parents thanks to newContinue Reading
2022-01-20
A linguist analyses Boris Johnson’s apology
Over the past month, the government crisis of “partygate” has escalated with every new headline about potential lockdown breaches by government staff. Plenty of experts have focused on guidelines and laws relevant to these alleged events, but the ongoing controversy has also been peculiarly linguistic in nature. Journalists and politiciansContinue Reading
2022-01-20
How the brain tunes in to unfamiliar voices while you’re sleeping – and why it matters
Have you ever watched a duck sleep and wondered how it keeps one eye open? Ducks, like many other birds, sleep with one half of the brain awake while the other half sleeps. This is called “unihemispheric sleep” and allows the animal to monitor the environment for predators while gettingContinue Reading
2022-01-19
A Project to Count Climate Crisis Deaths Has Surprising Results
Climate change is already killing people, but countries don’t have an easy way to count those deaths. A new project might change that.Continue Reading
2022-01-18
How to be a god: we might one day create virtual worlds with characters as intelligent as ourselves
Virtual character may soon be smarter than us. Michelangelus/Shutterstock Most research into the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) concerns its use for weaponry, transport or profiling. Although the dangers presented by an autonomous, racist tank cannot be understated, there is another aspect to all this. What about our responsibilities toContinue Reading
2022-01-17