The modern world depends on electricity. It’s not just a luxury we use to power our devices and enjoy our free time. It’s not even just a convenience of having light, heating and cooling in our buildings. Electricity is a crucial resource, especially in urban areas, providing public security, safety, and health and making possible … Read more
Saturn’s iconic rings are the biggest brightest rings in our solar system, extending over 280000 kilometres from the planet. That is wide enough to fit 6 Earths in a row. But Saturn won’t always look like this, recent studies on Saturn’s ring shows that its rings are disappearing. That’s right Saturn is losing its rings … Read more
Across the whole planet, humans eat on average between 1 and 2.7 kilograms of food a day. That’s over 365 kilograms a year per person and more than 28,800 kilograms over the course of a lifetime. And every last scrap makes its way through the digestive system. Comprised of ten organs covering nine meters, and … Read more
This probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but breaking up with someone is hard. There’s the rejection, the tears, the possible shouting and if nothing else, it’s just really awkward! Maybe that’s why, for better or worse, some people decide a proper break-up isn’t worth it. Instead, they choose to just, disappear. In … Read more
Deep in our solar system, a new era of space exploration is unfolding. Beneath the thick ice of Europa, in the vapour plumes on Enceladus and within the methane lakes of Titan, astrobiologists are on the hunt for extraterrestrial life. We have honed in on these three moons because each is an ‘ocean world’, an … Read more
Picture warm, gooey cookies, crunchy candies, velvety cakes, waffle cones piled high with ice cream. Is your mouth watering? Are you craving dessert? Why? What happens in the brain that makes sugary foods so hard to resist? Sugar is a general term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates and it’s found in … Read more
Aerogel is a synthetic porous ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component for the gel has been replaced with a gas. The result is a solid with extremely low density and low thermal conductivity. Nicknames include frozen smoke, solid smoke, solid air, solid cloud, blue smoke owing to its translucent nature … Read more
Game theory as we know it today came about in part because of one man’s interest in poker. This man was not just your average man on the street. He was a mathematician, physicist and computer scientist named John von Neumann. His goal was loftier than becoming a better poker player. He was only interested … Read more
My absolute favourite fact in the universe is that we are made of dead stars. And that’s literally true. The atoms in our bodies were actually created inside the cause of stars that then exploded and died or unravelled into space. And so the question about the periodic table is very interesting. What was the … Read more
If you have spent any amount of time on the Internet, you have probably read some weird stuff. Like, at some point, you have probably heard someone claim that there are toxins trapped in your body and that you need to do something to help release them. To accomplish this, some people favour juice cleanses. … Read more
Looking to make a fresh start amongst the stars? Here are a few options and today we are counting down our picks for the Top 10 Places for New Human Colonies In Our Solar System. For this list, we’re looking at planets, moons and dwarf planets orbiting our sun that could potentially be colonized in … Read more
Suppose you are standing at the North Pole of Uranus, by the way, you can’t you would sink right in, But if you could you would see the Sun appear on the horizon circle higher and higher for 21 years. Then circle back down to the horizon over the course of another 21 years. Once … Read more
Time is something that everyone is familiar with 60 seconds is one minute, 60 minutes is one hour, 24 hours is one day and so on. This is known as Linear Time and is something that everyone is familiar with and agrees upon. But consider this, if someone came up to you on the street … Read more
Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest, most efficient, and most available sources of power on earth. To generate one kilowatt-hour of energy —the amount a modern household consumes in 48 minutes— nuclear power plants only emit 12 grams of carbon dioxide— enough to fill about three two-litre soda bottles. Meanwhile, to produce the same … Read more
The first type of molecule that ever formed in the universe has been detected in space for the first time, after decades of searching. Scientists discovered its signature in our own galaxy using the world’s largest airborne observatory, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, as the aircraft flew high above the Earth’s surface … Read more