Inside an illicit meth lab. Darwin Brandis/Shutterstock Ever been in love? You’ll know the rush. That’s chemistry at work. Our brain produces molecules such as 2-phenylethylamine, the mood enhancer also found in chocolate. But eating chocolate won’t make you fall in love – enzymes in your liver break it downContinue Reading
Shutterstock/GaudiLab Most of us have experienced unwanted calls at home. This is in spite of efforts by regulators, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofcom, whose most recent report shows that around half of the UK population still receive nuisance calls. Many of these unsolicited calls annoy us because theyContinue Reading
GoodStudio/Shutterstock This article contains examples of racist, Islamophobic and threatening language Twitter has finally permanently removed right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins from its platform for violating its “hateful conduct” policy. Many would ask why it took so long for Twitter to ban someone with such a long record of offensive comments.Continue Reading
People Image Studio Many people suspect they’ve been infected with COVID-19 by now, despite the fact that only 0.5% of the UK’s population has actually been diagnosed with it. Similar numbers have been reported in other countries. Exactly how many people have actually had it, however, is unclear. There isContinue Reading
German authorities have had to take the difficult decision of reimposing a pandemic lockdown in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia after a resurgence of the coronavirus. This comes after the country’s R number, a measure of how quickly new cases of the disease are emerging, almost tripled over the courseContinue Reading
Archaeologists studying the monument site from above ground. University of Bradford The chances of finding another major archaeological monument near Stonehenge today are probably very small given the generations of work that has gone into studying the site. Stumbling across such a monument that measured more than 2km across mustContinue Reading
Rotating black holes suck up anything that gets near enough. muratart/shutterstock A rotating black hole is such an extreme force of nature that it drags surrounding time and space around with it. So it is only natural to ask whether black holes could be used as some sort of energyContinue Reading
Pexels Many of us have been spending more time at home than ever before, and chances are unless you live by yourself in the middle of nowhere, at some point unwanted noise will have infiltrated your lockdown. Whether it’s cars passing nearby, a neighbour’s blaring music or the constant droneContinue Reading
Is coronavirus over in some cities? StreetVJ/Shutterstock More than half a million people have died from COVID-19 globally. It is a major tragedy, but perhaps not on the scale some initially feared. And there are finally signs that the pandemic is shuddering in places, as if its engine is runningContinue Reading
Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock What would happen if gravity was reduced by half? – Phoebe, aged 13, London UK Gravity is a force that pulls things towards each other. It is the reason we walk on the surface of the Earth and don’t float off into space. The gravitational pull of the EarthContinue Reading