Month: April 2017
Who Discovered Neptune?
On the night of 23 September 1846, the German astronomer Johann Galle noticed an object in the constellation Aquarius which didn’t appear on the latest star maps. Its disc-like appearance suggested it was a new planet – a conclusion confirmed the following night by its movement relative to the distant stars. Galle had discovered Neptune, …
Meet Eric – UK’s First Robot
Built in 1928, Eric was the UK’s first robot – a talking, moving automaton that was created by Captain Richards and AH Reffell less than a decade after the word robot was first used. But after wowing crowds in Europe and the US, he mysteriously disappeared. Now, with the help of 861 backers on Kickstarter, …
What Causes Middle Age Spread?
Babies are vulnerable to the cold, because they are small and can’t move themselves out of draughts or the wet. Evolution has compensated by giving them brown adipose tissue, or BAT (it’s often called ‘brown fat’ but it’s actually more like muscle). BAT generates heat by metabolising fat in a deliberately inefficient way. About 5 …
What’s the Link Between Gold and Earthquakes?
1. Almost all the gold present in Earth’s crust today was delivered by asteroid impacts four billion years ago. Since hen, it has been buried under lava flows and other rock strata. 2. Gold is one of the least reactive elements, but it will dissolve very slightly in water. There are about 20g of gold …
Which Life Form Has the Biggest Genome?
There is still no comprehensive list of genome sequences of all life forms. But from what is available, it looks like the Japanese canopy plant is currently the biggest, with 50 times more DNA than the human genome. Of the animals, the marbled lungfish’s genome (Protopterus aethiopicus) weighs in at 44 times ours. But while size matters for biodiversity studies and understanding the evolution of …
Can Experience Change the Actual Structure of Our Brain?
Almost everything we do changes the physical structure of our brains, including what we think about. Each time you recall a memory, for instance, you are effectively strengthening the connections between brain cells. Skilled activities, like playing musical instruments or playing chess, are associated with larger changes to the size of specific brain regions. For example, violinists have more brain …
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Blooming Algae
This picture shows a bloom of algae that occurred in Utah Lake, Utah last summer. The lake covers an area of 385km2, and nearly all of it was covered by the bloom. The proliferation of algae was probably caused by warm weather, low water levels and run-off of pollutants from the neighbouring land. Some samples …
Why Do Cats Have Whiskers?
A cat’s characteristic ‘moustache’ of vibrissae, made up of 24 or so mobile hairs, is accompanied by other less apparent whiskers above the eyes, on the chin and the back of the front paws (the carpal whiskers). These thickened hairs are alive with deep-rooted nerves that help our feline friends literally feel their way through …
What is the Most Accurate Type of Biometric Identification?
Biometric technologies are designed to recognise you, acting like a password to give you access to a computer system or pass through a security system. Some listen to your voice or examine your signature, some read fingerprints or measure faces, some examine retinas or study your brainwaves, some even measure the geometry of your hands …
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Is Everything in the Universe Expanding at the Same Rate?
The Universe is expanding at a rate of around 75,000km/h for every million light-years distance, on average. That might sound a lot, but it’s only apparent over galactic distances, where gravity no longer dominates. Everyday objects don’t take part in the cosmic expansion; if they did, there’d be no cosmic expansion, as our standard ‘yardsticks’ …
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21 Psychological Hacks that Will Help You Deal With Different Social Situations
1. When you first meet people, try to notice their eye color while also smiling at them. It might be because you look for a second or two longer, but all I can tell you is that people really respond to it. 2. Pay attention to people’s feet. If you approach two people in the …
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Are Coywolves a New Species?
Creating a new species is not as easy as it may appear on the surface. DNA testing tells us that the fashionably named ‘coywolf’ is in fact just a variation of a coyote living across eastern Canada and the US. These adaptive ‘super predators’ carry genes from the coyote, wolf and domestic dog that differ in ratio depending …