When the Yorkshire Evening News reported on an address delivered by 25-year-old physicist Florence Bell at a scientific conference held in Leeds in 1939, it wasn’t her science that made the headlines, but simply the fact that she was a woman doing science. What neither the writers who came upContinue Reading
Ever stumbled upon a huge fossil on your holiday? That’s what happened to me and two friends in January 2018, on a beach in Howick in the north of England, while on a geological road-trip across England and Wales. It was pure fluke, but it turned out that we hadContinue Reading
As countries declare endemicity and drop restrictions, how does a battered and bruised society embrace a sudden return to normality?Continue Reading
With the growth in outdoor swimming during the pandemic, and with more people trying it out this winter, the question of whether the body gets used to cold temperatures if you swim often is much debated. The short answer is “it can”. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.Continue Reading
For decades, scientists thought that being more carnivorous set our ancestors along their evolutionary path. New evidence casts doubt on this theory.Continue Reading
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
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
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
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
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
