John A Davis/Shutterstock It’s a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound? Conjured by the interaction of solar particles with gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, the aurora generally occurs near Earth’s poles, where theContinue Reading
One of the hand prints discovered in Tibet that is believed to have been made by children. Matthew Bennett, Author provided Fossilised footprints, and more rarely, hand prints, can be found around the world; left as people went about their daily business, preserved by freak acts of geological preservation. InContinue Reading
Shutterstock If you’ve had both of your COVID vaccinations, you may have suffered some side-effects – perhaps headaches, fatigue, fever or a sore arm. These effects are mainly caused by your immune system’s reaction to the vaccine. But most scientists agree that there is another cause: the human mind. TheContinue Reading
Lucky Raccoon/Shutterstock The story has a lot to recommend it: psychologist Dan Ariely, the author of a bestselling book on the behavioural science of dishonesty, retracts his study because the data was faked. No wonder it’s been picked up by the world’s media. Buzzfeed declared this “the latest blow toContinue Reading
Bumblebees are better at flying in wet conditions than other bees Simona Chira/Shutterstock This year will be remembered in the UK for its extremely heavy downpours. Intense summer storms resulted in some places exceeding twice their average rainfall. These wet summers make life even harder for bees, who are alreadyContinue Reading
Zoomik/Shutterstock The world’s most sophisticated commercially available spyware may be being abused, according to an investigation by 17 media organisations in ten countries. Intelligence leaks and forensic phone analysis suggests the surveillance software, called Pegasus, has been used to target and spy on the phones of human rights activists, investigativeContinue Reading
8H/Shutterstock Dig a teaspoon into your nearest clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that analyse samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to determine which forms of microscopic life exist inContinue Reading
During the pandemic, the pejorative term “snake-oil salesman” has been bandied about a lot. It’s been used, perhaps with a tinge of 1980s nostalgia, to describe convicted fraudster and serial opportunist Jim Bakker, whose colloidal Silver Solution required only some deft rebranding to become a specific curative for COVID-19. ForContinue Reading
Pavel Chagochkin/Shutterstock Military planning is a complicated endeavour, calling upon experts in logistics and infrastructure to predict resource availability and technological advancements. Long-range military planning, deciding what to invest in now to prepare armed forces for the world in thirty years’ time, is even more difficult. One of the mostContinue Reading
Everything I Do/Shutterstock Counting feels utterly effortless to adults, who are unlikely to even remember when or how they picked up this useful, apparently automatic skill. Yet when you think about it, counting is a remarkable invention. It helped early humans to trade, apportion food and organise fledgling civilisations, layingContinue Reading
