Tech

Full size blue crab Charles Darwin believed evolution created “endless forms most beautiful”. It’s a nice sentiment but it doesn’t explain why evolution keeps making crabs. Scientists have long wondered whether there are limits to what evolution can do or if Darwin had the right idea. The truth may lie somewhere between the two. While […]

SpeedKingz/Shutterstock “Skalk,” I cursed in Kelvak. It’s my favourite language to curse in – there is nothing as satisfying as the harsh consonants and default imperatives of the primary Kelvaki language. This quote is by the main character in sci-fi novel The Widening Gyre by Michael R. Johnston. Writers like Johnston who invent alien profanity […]

SpeedKingz/Shutterstock “Skalk,” I cursed in Kelvak. It’s my favourite language to curse in – there is nothing as satisfying as the harsh consonants and default imperatives of the primary Kelvaki language. This quote is by the main character in sci-fi novel The Widening Gyre by Michael R. Johnston. Writers like Johnston who invent alien profanity […]

MaciejGillert/Shutterstock Every team still competing in the Fifa World Cup is determined to get their hands on football’s ultimate prize. But willpower isn’t everything. Success on the pitch also depends on the players’ abilities to run for long distances, including high-intensity bursts and occasional short sprints. Our new research shows that footballers can be categorised […]

We all make judgments based on first impressions but some people take it to extremes Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock You’ve finally got an interview for your dream job. Dozens of applications, dozens of rejection letters – but now you’ve got a shot at the job you really wanted. In you go. Maybe you shake hands with […]

elwynn/Shutterstock Drones are already shaping the face of our cities – used for building planning, heritage, construction and safety enhancement. But, as studies by the UK’s Department of Transport have found, swathes of the public have a limited understanding of how drones might be practically applied. It’s crucial that the ways drones are affecting our […]

The way we bond with our primary caregiver as a child influences our interactions as an adult Liderina/Shutterstock Attachment theory is almost everywhere. In magazines and books, in the news, on social media and in our conversations with each other. Originally rooted in developmental psychology, the theory explains how we form and maintain close relationships […]

Homo Sapiens may survive. JuliusKielaitis Most species are transitory. They go extinct, branch into new species or change over time due to random mutations and environmental shifts. A typical mammalian species can be expected to exist for a million years. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, have been around for roughly 300,000 years. So what will happen […]

Artist impression of WASP b and its star NASA, ESA, CSA, and J. Olmsted (STScI) Since the first planet orbiting a star other than the Sun was discovered in 1995, we have realised that planets and planetary systems are more diverse than we ever imagined. Such distant worlds – exoplanets – give us the opportunity […]

Ajnabia odysseus lived 66 million years ago, making it one of the last dinosaurs on Earth Raul Martin Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. The skies darkened and plants stopped photosynthesising. The plants died, then the animals that […]

Artist impression of WASP b and its star NASA, ESA, CSA, and J. Olmsted (STScI) Since the first planet orbiting a star other than the Sun was discovered in 1995, we have realised that planets and planetary systems are more diverse than we ever imagined. Such distant worlds – exoplanets – give us the opportunity […]

A camera mounted on the tip of one of the Orion capsule’s solar array wings captured this footage of the spacecraft and the Moon NASA Neil Armstrong took his historic “one small step” on the Moon in 1969. And just three years later, the last Apollo astronauts left our celestial neighbour. Since then, hundreds of […]