Science (Page 37)

Rost9/Shutterstock What is exotic matter, and could we use it to make wormholes? – Julia, aged 14, London Matter is “stuff”. It is anything that is made up of particles that take up space. Everything we can feel and see on Earth is matter, and it’s usually in one of three types: solid, liquid or gas. This could be the chair you’re sitting on, sea water, or the helium in a balloon. There are other types of matter that do not behave like the gases, liquids or solids that we normally encounter on Earth. The ones that behave in the weirdest ways are called exotic matter. We can create exotic matter in laboratories by cooling some materials to very lowContinue Reading

The Vikings got to the Americas long before Columbus. vlastas/Shutterstock When Columbus landed in 1492, the Americas had been settled for tens of thousands of years. He wasn’t the first person to discover the continent. Instead, his discovery was the last of many discoveries. In all, people found the Americas at least seven different times. For at least six of those, it wasn’t so new after all. The discoverers came by sea and by land, bringing new genes, new languages, new technologies. Some stayed, explored, and built empires. Others went home, and left few hints they’d ever been there. From last to first, here’s the story of how we discovered the Americas. 7. Christopher Columbus: AD 1492 Replicas of Columbus’sContinue Reading

'Cosy gaming' is having its moment. Two Pixel/Shutterstock Video game developers have always sought to “find the fun” for their audiences and to provide players with exciting worlds to escape to. However, the cost of “finding the fun” was highlighted in 2014 when women in the games industry attempted to expose the misogyny in some games and in their communities. In response, some members of the gamer community lashed out. In what became known as the GamerGate controversy, predominantly male activists sought to intimidate women in the industry with death threats and rape threats. These gamers expressed a desire to isolate the world of gaming from broader social mores. GamerGate was a low point for the gaming world, seemingly confirmingContinue Reading

There could be a planetary heist going on in the star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. NASA/James Webb Telescope Our Sun has a rather lonely existence in the Milky Way galaxy. It sits on its own, four light years away from the nearest star, with only its planetary system for company. But it wasn’t always like this. We almost exclusively observe young stars in groups, so-called stellar nurseries, where they brush shoulders with stellar siblings. These stellar nurseries are densely populated places, where hundreds of thousands of stars often reside in the same volume of space that the Sun inhabits on its own. Violent interactions, in which stars exchange energy, occur frequently, but not for long. After aContinue Reading

Weightlessness affects how our cells develop and divide. MarcelClemens/Shutterstock Space is a hostile, extreme environment. It’s only a matter of time before ordinary people are exposed to this environment, either by engaging in space tourism or by joining self-sustaining colonies far away from Earth. To this end, there needs to be a much better understanding of how the environmental dangers of space will affect the biology of our cells, tissues, organs, and cognition. Crucially for future space colonies, we need to know whether we can easily reproduce in environments other than those found on Earth. The effects of radiation on our cells, producing DNA damage, are well documented. What’s less clear is how lower levels of gravity, what scientists callContinue Reading

Pooya Soltani, Author provided In a recent Premier League game, Manchester United went 2-0 up when striker Marcus Rashford ran on to a pass and slotted the ball past Liverpool’s goalkeeper, Alisson Becker. The game was then held up briefly while the “video referee” checked whether Rashford was ahead of the last defender, Joe Gomez, when the pass was made. The difference between onside and offside – between goal or no goal – can be tiny: Indeed, the margins can be so small that simply placing the camera at a slightly different angle could make a big difference. This problem of camera angles, and how they affect our perception of offside calls, is what encouraged me to use my expertiseContinue Reading

You can do it. Krakenimages.com/Shutterstock The cost of living crisis is dominating headlines at the moment. With so much conflicting information flying around, it can be hard to work out what is the best way to look after your household finances. Banks, energy providers and shops will often try to blind you with big numbers and confusing mathematical terms – often preying on people’s fear of mathematics. However, even if you count yourself as a numberphobe, there are a few very simple steps you can take to use maths in your favour and save some money. The trouble with averages For most people, the biggest impact on the cost of living will come from hikes in gas and electricity costs.Continue Reading

The English Premier League (EPL) celebrates its 30th season this year, and much has changed since the league’s inception in 1992. For many long-time fans, the period may well be defined by the influx of money into the sport, with player wages ballooning, transfer records toppling, and broadcasting deals reaching into the billions of pounds. Some of this wealth has been used to impose major technological enhancements on the league, including the video assistant referee (VAR), goalline technology, and vanishing spray applied to the playing surface by the referee to indicate where set plays should be taken from. Meanwhile, increasingly advanced player tracking systems have given commentators and pundits access to team performance metrics in ever more granular detail. TheseContinue Reading