Insects, which include more than a million described species, represent roughly two-thirds of the biodiversity on Earth. But they have a big PR problem – many think of insects as little more than crop-eating, disease-carrying jumper-munchers. But in reality, species fitting this bill are but a tiny part of an enormous picture.
How the cat got its coat (and other furry tails)
What does it mean to think and could a machine ever do it?
Damaging electric currents in space affect Earth’s equatorial region, not just the poles
The Earth’s magnetic field – known as the “magnetosphere” – protects our atmosphere from the “solar wind.” That’s the constant stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun. When the magnetosphere shields Earth from these solar particles, they get funneled toward the polar regions of our atmosphere.
What is the best exercise for losing weight?
Corks seal a wine’s fate: aging under natural vs synthetic closures
Most foods are best as fresh as possible. I remember picking peaches at my grandfather’s ranch in Northern California and eating them on the spot. What a taste! But the exceptions to this rule are the many wines that actually need some aging to taste their best. Winemakers know this, and work to control the aging process including decisions they make about how to bottle up their product.
Fat-burning fat exists, but might not be the key to weight loss
When you think about body fat, it’s probably white fat that comes to mind. That’s where our bodies store excess calories, and it’s the stuff you want to get rid of when you are trying to lose weight. But white fat isn’t the only kind of fat in the body – you also have brown fat and beige, or brite, fat, which can actually burn calories instead of storing them.
Dry January - is it worth giving up alcohol for a month?
The psychology of New Year’s resolutions
Research has shown that about half of all adults make New Year’s resolutions. However, fewer than 10% manage to keep them for more than a few months. As a professor of behavioural addiction I know how easy people can fall into bad habits and why on trying to give up those habits it is easy to relapse. Resolutions usually come in the form of lifestyle changes and changing behaviour that has become routine and habitual (even if they are not problematic) can be hard to do.
Our prettiest pollutant: just how bad are fireworks for the environment?
The bangs and fizzes of fireworks are rapidly replacing the chimes of Big Ben as the defining sound of New Year’s Eve celebrations in London, while around the world, city landmarks are becoming stages for increasingly spectacular pyrotechnic displays. Since the millennium, the popularity of fireworks has even extended into back gardens, where smaller fireworks or sparklers are lit up at the stroke of midnight.
Should I throw away food once a fly has landed on it?
Explainer: the mysterious dark energy that speeds the universe’s rate of expansion
Animals are evolving faster than you think – here’s the living proof
Explainer: what is a neutron star?
Neutron stars, with a solid crust (and even oceans and an atmosphere!) are the densest solid object we can observe, reaching a few times the density of an atomic nucleus at their core. A sample of neutron star material the size of a grain of sand would weigh roughly the same as the largest ship ever to sail the seas – more than 500,000 tonnes.
Explainer: what is mass?
Explainer: can you be addicted to food?
Taking a hot bath after exercise improves performance in the heat
How to clean up space debris – using game theory
A piece of debris just 10cm in diameter could cause an entire spacecraft to disintegrate and it is estimated that there are more than 29,000 objects larger than 10cm in Earth’s orbit. This poses a major risk to the spacecraft to-ing and fro-ing from the International Space Station, not to mention the hundreds of satellites that are now essential to daily lives.
Did ‘dark matter’ or a star called Nemesis kill the dinosaurs?
The dinosaur extinction 66m years ago was most likely caused by a comet or big asteroid hitting the Earth. But given that asteroids don’t actually hit our planet very often, could this really be the whole story? Many scientists are now asking whether some sort of cosmological event could have boosted the number of comets at the time, making such a collision more likely.
