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Image Description: green aliens. The moon landing was a hoax. There are no stars in the photographs of moon landing, as they were removed by NASA to prevent astronomers from identifying that the photos were in fact taken on Earth. Astronauts couldn’t have survived the radiation, heat and solar flares they encountered, and the […]
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Image Description: cast of the skeleton of Lucy, an Australopithecus afarensis fossil Researchers have discovered a new species of ancient ape that provides hints as to how bipedal walking evolved in modern humans. The species, given the scientific name Danuvius guggenmosi, was found in clay pits in south-eastern Germany, in the state of Bavaria. […]
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Image Description: Fireworks. The sparks from a sparkler are 1000-1600°C. Yet, they are still safe to use because there is a difference between temperature and energy. The thermal energy of the spark is related to its mass, as well as its temperature. As sparks have little mass, they do not have enough thermal energy to […]
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Image Description: Harbour Seal pup Seagulls are attracted to urban areas. This is because temperatures are generally 4-6°C warmer, meaning their breeding season can last for longer. There are also fewer predators in urban locations, and street-lighting allows them to forage in bins for food after dark, as well as stealing it straight out of […]
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Image description: hurricane. Researchers from Florida State University have discovered “stormquakes” – a new geophysical phenomenon formed when large storms interact with the ocean to cause a release of seismic waves that can travel for thousands of miles. These previously unknown seismic events can have the equivalent effect of earthquakes with magnitudes of over 3.5. […]
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Image Description: an optical circuit. As time goes on, our computer are becoming more and more powerful. This is primarily due to the ongoing development of the CPU (or GPU): the ‘brain’ of the computer. A pressing question facing the electronics industry is whether computers will one day become more powerful than a human beings. […]
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Image Description: YouTube In August 2019, the Indian rapper Badshah was widely accused of using a network of servers for the promotion of his latest music video ‘Paagal’. One day after release, this video had reached as many as 75 million views on YouTube, a record. The rapper maintains that he merely employed Google advertising […]
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Image Description: Prof. Sir John Gurdon. On Friday evening, Prof. Sir John Gurdon was invited to give a talk by the Oxford University Biological Society. His talk, titled ‘Over 60 years at the bench, and still there’ was a modest and candid account of his science career, from anecdotes about his school days, through to […]
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Image Description: roasted coffee beans. 600 billion cups of coffee are drunk globally each year. Coffee is one of your five-a-day, as it is a fruit. It’s also a seed, and not a bean. There are two types of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica coffee tends to be sweeter, but more acidic. Originally from the […]
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Image Description: a goat eating grass. Goats have rectangular pupils. This allows a wider range of vision of 340°, so pretty much everything, except what is directly behind them, which is essential for spotting predators and not getting eaten. However, with a rectangular pupil, goats cannot look up or down without moving their heads. […]
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Image Description: iPhone. On October 9, 2019, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino for “the development of lithium-ion batteries”. Look around and you will find lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries everywhere in your life – phones, computers and electrical vehicles. However, can you imagine that a […]
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Image Description: two people at the Biological Society stall at the Freshers’ Fair. All I remember of my Freshers’ Fair two years ago was how hot Exams Schools was, and how so many people kept trying to make small talk with me, neither of which agreed with (what is still) the worst hangover of […]
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Image Description: a bumblebee on an orange flower. 1. Bees have hairy tongues for drinking nectar. Bumblebees are able to drink both runny nectars and gloopy nectars. How they are able to do this has baffled scientists – until now. Bees have long, rod-like tongues covered in hair-like protrusions, best described as a tiny mop. This […]
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What is mass? What are the organising principles of our universe? What processes have given rise to our existence? These may seem like grand questions, but there is one place where they can seem quite mundane: the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, more commonly known as CERN. Located on the border between Switzerland and France, […]
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Image Description: a tiger. Zoos are no modern issue. The origin of zoos can be traced to animals captured by the ancient Mesopotamian Sumerians, or perhaps the animals caged for entertaining guests of Roman senators. While zoos have changed drastically since then – more space, fewer bars – the harm done to animal welfare remains. […]
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Artificial intelligence voice assistants like Siri and Alexa are reflecting, reinforcing, and spreading gender bias, a recent United Nations report suggested. The UNESCO report, entitled “I’d Blush if I Could”, explores the consequences of the spread of smart speakers and voice assistants, particularly the presentation of many of these platforms as female. “With many AI […]
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Chocolate lovers can agree that the smell of fresh chocolate entices the senses with a mouthwatering sensation of euphoria. What most people don’t know, however, is that this complex taste, particularly in dark chocolate, is the result of a combination of 25 different molecules which all come together to create the scent we all know […]
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Image description: Bacteria While most of you probably cannot wait to go home over the summer, travel to foreign countries, or start summer vac schemes, 10 students on the Oxford iGEM team will be stationed in Oxford, on the front lines of bacterial warfare. Every year, undergrads from across various disciplines are given the opportunity […]
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In just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists and millions more were displaced from their homes. While the extent of the country’s promising recovery is hotly debated, one victim’s story embodies the nation’s story of resilience and recovery. The lone survivor of his immediate family, Abdoul […]
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