Science (Page 22)

Satanic panic in the modern era: how conspiracy theories take hold in times of crisis. Canva Earlier this year the non-binary singer-songwriter, Sam Smith, performed their song Unholy, at the Grammys. Dressed in a red devil-horned top hat and latex costume, the performance drew upon popular occult and gothic aesthetics. And it attracted a huge amount of criticism for the supposed promotion of satanic imagery. Conspiracy theorists alleged that the performance was, in fact, a real, satanic ritual orchestrated by an elite cult of Hollywood satanists. Its supposed aim? To morally subvert society by brainwashing and indoctrinating young people. Only a few months prior, a similar mass online panic had taken hold in the form of the Balenciaga scandal –Continue Reading

The control of fire by humans probably developed gradually over thousands of years. matsiukpavel / Shutterstock Human history is intimately entwined with the use and control of fire. However, working out when our relationship with fire began and how it subsequently evolved has been notoriously difficult. This is partly due to the incomplete nature of archaeological records, and also because fire use was fleeting, making burnt remains difficult to detect. But our team has found evidence of the controlled use of fire by direct human ancestors – or hominins – at a site in Spain dating to 250,000 years ago. This pushes the earliest evidence of fire control in Europe back by 50,000 years. The findings have been published inContinue Reading

Kissing may seem natural, but it remains unclear whether it's a universal human act, or a cultural one. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A / Shutterstock Lip kissing is an act that’s so natural and common in many present-day societies it is easily taken for granted. But it’s not actually clear whether people have always been kissing, or whether its origins lie in the relatively recent past. It turns out that the history and causes for kissing are more complex than anticipated. In an article published in the journal Science, we analysed substantial amounts of overlooked evidence that challenge current beliefs that the first record of romantic-sexual kissing is from India around 1500BC. Instead, lip kissing is documented in ancient Mesopotamia –Continue Reading

The May 2017 Manchester terrorist attack was a harrowing reminder of humanity’s capacity for destruction. However, there is another side to the incident that testifies to the best parts of human nature. On May 22 2017 an extremist suicide bomber detonated a homemade bomb at pop singer Ariana Grande’s concert in the Manchester Arena, killing 23 people and injuring over 1,000 – many of them children. In a recently published report into the response of the emergency services to the attack, the authors said “the heroism shown by very many people that night is striking”. An earlier report commissioned by the mayor of Manchester noted “hundreds if not thousands of acts of individual bravery and selflessness”. Research often paints peopleContinue Reading

Illus_man / Shutterstock There has been shock around the world at the rapid rate of progress with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence created with what’s known as large language models (LLMs). These systems can produce text that seems to display thought, understanding and even creativity. But can these systems really think and understand? This is not a question that can be answered through technological advance, but careful philosophical analysis and argument tells us the answer is no. And without working through these philosophical issues, we will never fully comprehend the dangers and benefits of the AI revolution. In 1950, the father of modern computing, Alan Turing, published a paper which laid out a way of determining whether a computer thinks.Continue Reading

Over a quarter of people in the UK gamble online at least once every four weeks. Wpadington / Shutterstock More than a quarter of people in the UK gamble online at least once every four weeks. And 1%–2% of UK adults demonstrate moderate-to-high risk levels of gambling-related harms. The substantive and striking changes that the rise of online gambling have introduced are acknowledged by the UK government’s recently published plans to change the law in this area. Through smartphones or other internet-enabled devices, people can gamble online anywhere, at any time. Gambling online also often allows those experiencing gambling-related harm to more easily hide this from those around them. The reach of online gambling by operators, and gambling overall, isContinue Reading

On Thursday May 4, for the first time, members of the public voting in local council elections in England were required to bring photo ID to their polling station. Initial reports suggested that a few people were turned away because they didn’t bring one of the approved forms of photo ID. But even if they did bring the right documents, such as a driving licence or passport, there’s a question mark over whether the people manning polling stations could tell accurately whether the voter was the person pictured in the ID. When you present your photo ID to be checked, the person looking at it has to decide if your face matches the picture in the document. In a lab,Continue Reading

Tobacco plants produce sounds at a frequency outside the human hearing range. S.Phoophinyo/Shutterstock Plants may appear silent, indifferent organisms to us, but recent research has found they make high-pitched clicking sounds when they are struggling to find water. In principle, neighbouring plants could pick up on and react to these noises. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here. Scientists in Israel record brief pulses of sound coming from tobacco and tomato plants in a greenhouse. They happened more often when the plants had not been watered or at times when they were losing large amounts of water from their leaves. The sounds were about as loud as a quiet conversation but were mostly betweenContinue Reading

mrmohock/Shutterstock Molly was 88 years old and in good health. She had outlived two husbands, her siblings, most of her friends and her only son. “I don’t have any meaningful relationships left, dear,” she told me. “They’ve all died. And you know what? Underneath it all, I want to leave this world too.” Leaning a little closer, as though she was telling me a secret, she continued: Shall I tell you what I am? I’m strong. I can admit to myself and to you that there’s nothing left for me here. I’m more than ready to leave when it’s my time. In fact, it can’t come quickly enough. I’ve interviewed many older people for research. Every so often, I’m struckContinue Reading

Euclid is set to launch this year on a rocket built by SpaceX. Work performed by ATG under contract for ESA, CC BY-SA The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid satellite completed the first part of its long journey into space on May 1 2023, when it arrived in Florida on a boat from Italy. It is scheduled to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket, built by SpaceX, from Cape Canaveral in early July. Euclid is designed to provide us with a better understanding of the “mysterious” components of our universe, known as dark matter and dark energy. Unlike the normal matter we experience here on Earth, dark matter neither reflects nor emits light. It binds galaxies together and isContinue Reading