Flickr, CC BY If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted. As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive whenContinue Reading
Genomic analysis of ancient remains has shed light on the origins of the black death and offers insights into the coevolution of humans and diseases.Continue Reading
Nature wants us to reproduce, so how come celibacy evolved? Carsten ten Brink/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND Why would someone join an institution that removed the option of family life and required them to be celibate? Reproduction, after all, is at the very heart of the evolution that shaped us. Yet manyContinue Reading
Tombstones investigated in new research, most from 1338. P.-G. Borbone/Nature, Author provided It is not an exaggeration to say that the question of where and when the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic ever, originated is one of the biggest mysteries in human history. After all, the Black Death was theContinue Reading
People who are isolated from others do worse on cognitive tests. sfam_photo/Shutterstock Why do we get a buzz from being in large groups at festivals, jubilees and other public events? According to the social brain hypothesis, it’s because the human brain specifically evolved to support social interactions. Studies have shownContinue Reading
Jonny Bairstow in full flow. Nic Redhead via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Jonny Bairstow played the “innings of a lifetime” when he scored the second fastest century by an England cricketer in a Test match to help his team beat New Zealand, currently the world’s top-rated Test team. To findContinue Reading
As the latest Jurassic World film hits cinemas, we’re re-running a story from The Conversation Weekly’s archives about what dinosaurs really looked liked – and how our understanding of their appearance keeps evolving. Since the release of the first Jurassic Park film nearly 30 years ago, scientists have learnt aContinue Reading
In physics, experiments to answer the big questions can take decades to run—and might not produce any findings at all.Continue Reading
The RoboFly University of Washington Allow me to take you on a trip down my memory lane. As a young lad, a film I saw captured my imagination: Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 release about people shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the body of an injured scientist to repairContinue Reading
Gaia mapping the stars of the Milky Way. ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier, CC BY-NC The European Space Agency’s (Esa) Gaia mission has just released new data. The Gaia satellite was launched in 2013, with the aim of measuring the precise positions of a billion stars. In addition to measuringContinue Reading
