Science (Page 83)

Megalodons are the biggest predatory sharks ever discovered. from www.shutterstock.com Made famous by the 2018 blockbuster The Meg, the largest predatory shark ever discovered, the megalodon, is a bit of a mystery. We know it lived between 15 and 3.6 million years ago and it reached at least 14 metres in length, more than double the size of an adult great white. But learning any more about the giant shark requires a bit of detective work. Because of its soft cartilaginous skeleton, only a few parts of the shark’s body are mineralised and preserved, including its teeth, skull and spine. This means the fossil record is very poor for this animal. Unsurprisingly, the predator’s 17cm teeth have received a lotContinue Reading

Lost love. Ekkasit Rakrotchit/Shutterstock I am happily married, but I have never been able to stop missing my ex partner. The regrets I have affect me every day. My new life is wonderful, but I just can’t be happy. How can I move forward? Anonymous, 38, Manchester. “Any time gone by was better,” wrote the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique in the 15th century, perfectly capturing what a powerful emotion nostalgia is. This simple line reveals that longing for the past is a universal feeling, experienced by people all over the world throughout history. We remember the past fondly because, being unchangeable, it is also unthreatening – unlike the present and the future. It can be a refuge too, especially whenContinue Reading

Crocodiles have not evolved much in the past 200 million years. Bas Leenders/flickr, CC BY-SA One of the most enduring tropes about crocodiles is to describe them as “living fossils”. They are cold, slow moving and scaly, so they look like how one might picture a dinosaur. Like many clichés, there is an element of truth to this comparison. The crocodiles from 200 million years ago look surprisingly like the ones we know today. But why have the modern crocodilians, including crocodiles, alligators and caimans, changed so little over such an immense span of time? In new research, published today, we have attempted to answer this question using advanced evolutionary modelling. Relatives of crocodiles have been around for an extraordinaryContinue Reading

Breeds with exaggerated features include the Scottish fold. Andrey Tairov/Shutterstock For decades, humans have been selectively breeding cats and dogs to exhibit exaggerated features – particularly in their faces. When it comes to cats, the very flat, round faces of the modern Persian and Exotic Shorthair are classic examples. These breeds are likely a result of humans’ preference for infant-like features that may directly tap in to our nurturing instincts. While it might be cute for humans to look at, there are various downsides for the animals when it comes to looking this way. These flat-faced features, known as “brachycephalic”, are usually associated with a very shortened muzzle, narrowed airways, excessive skin folding and shallow eye sockets. This can causeContinue Reading

Breeds with exaggerated features include the Scottish fold. Andrey Tairov/Shutterstock For decades, humans have been selectively breeding cats and dogs to exhibit exaggerated features – particularly in their faces. When it comes to cats, the very flat, round faces of the modern Persian and Exotic Shorthair are classic examples. These breeds are likely a result of humans’ preference for infant-like features that may directly tap in to our nurturing instincts. While it might be cute for humans to look at, there are various downsides for the animals when it comes to looking this way. These flat-faced features, known as “brachycephalic”, are usually associated with a very shortened muzzle, narrowed airways, excessive skin folding and shallow eye sockets. This can causeContinue Reading

Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock Could someone become a superhero in real life? – Emma, aged six, Tonbridge, UK Do you know the difference between these two groups of superheroes? Dr Strange, Scarlet Witch, Superman. Black Panther, Black Widow, Iron Man. The answer is that the superheroes in the first group all have personal superpowers that means they can do things that no ordinary human can: Dr Strange can teleport from one place to another, for example, and Scarlet Witch can move things with the power of her mind. On the other hand, the people in the second group are all ordinary humans who use their skills to achieve what most of us would find impossible. In many cases, they also use advanced orContinue Reading

Parkes radio telescope. CSIRO/wikipedia, CC BY-SA The US$100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen Initiative, funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, has identified a mysterious radio signal that seems to come from the nearest star to the Sun – Proxima Centauri. This has generated a flood of excitement in the press and among scientists themselves. The discovery, which was reported by the Guardian but has yet to be published in a scientific journal, may be the search for extraterrestrial intelligence’s (SETI) first bona fide candidate signal. It has been dubbed Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 or simply BLC-1. Although the Breakthrough Listen team are still working on the data, we know that the radio signal was detected by the Parkes telescope in Australia whileContinue Reading

NASA's James Webb telescope mirror undergoing cryogenic testing. Ball Aerospace/Flickr, CC BY-SA Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of the missions to keep an eye out for. Artemis 1 Artemis 1 is the first flight of the Nasa-led, international Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024. This will consist of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft which will be sent on a three-week flight around the Moon. IT will reach a maximum distance from Earth of 450,000km – the farthest into space that any spacecraft that canContinue Reading

It's time to snap out of bad habits. Jolygon/Shutterstock, CC BY-SA There’s no doubt that 2020 was difficult for everyone and tragic for many. But now vaccines against COVID-19 are finally being administered – giving a much needed hope of a return to normality and a happy 2021. However, months of anxiety, grief and loneliness can easily create a spiral of negativity that is hard to break out of. That’s because chronic stress changes the brain. And sometimes when we’re low we have no interest in doing the things that could actually make us feel better. To enjoy our lives in 2021, we need to snap out of destructive habits and get our energy levels back. In some cases, thatContinue Reading

h In football, free kicks occur when the referee believes a rule has been broken. If central enough and within 30 metres from the goal, the attacking team typically attempts a direct shot on goal. However, the goalkeeper routinely places a “wall” of defensive players in between the ball and the goal to complicate the kicker’s task of shooting on target. While this strategy is often effective, the wall frequently obstructs the goalkeeper’s initial view of the moving ball. Although the negative effects of this obstruction have been assumed by experts, they had not been scientifically quantified until recently. To do so, our team created a goalkeeping simulator using virtual reality. Both eyes see the world from slightly different perspectives,Continue Reading