A new study has revealed an unsettling truth about the citation metrics that are commonly used to gauge scientists’ level of impact and influence in their respective fields of research. Citation metrics indicate how often a scientist’s research output is formally referenced by colleagues in the footnotes of their own papers – but a comprehensive

For the first time, brain tissue grown in a lab has spontaneously exhibited electrical activity, and it looks startlingly similar to human brain activity. More specifically, it resembles the brain activity of premature babies. This is a huge discovery that brings on possibilities for studying the early development of brain disorders. It also has left some

Fundamentally, the cranes that dot city skylines today aren’t hugely different from the ones that the Greeks invented sometime around the late sixth century BCE – a remarkable effort of engineering. But new research argues that the Greeks may have used a clever lifting mechanism more than a century before they even invented cranes. There’s

Another face of our Australopithecus ancestors can now peer at us from further back in time than ever before, after its recovery from Earth’s clutches in Afar, Ethiopia. Previously, this hominin species had only been known from skull fragments, teeth, and limb bones. A local, Ali Bereino, discovered the first piece of this elusive skull

It was the largest, most elaborate society the Americas had ever seen. And it was about to come to an abrupt end. By the Late Horizon of the Inca Empire, the epic civilisation stretched all the way from Colombia in the north to Chile in the south. Imperial fortunes would soon change – violently, at

Many of us know that feeling of waking up, headache in tow, struggling to remember what we said and did after that extra drink the night before. And then suddenly, the memories vividly resurface. Alcohol disinhibits us, making us say and do things that we’d otherwise keep under wraps. People will often drink to gain

The tiny Polish village of Miejsce Odrzanskie has become the unlikely source of international media attention over the past fortnight as a result of what the New York Times called “a strange population anomaly“. It has now been almost a decade since the last boy was born in this place, with the most recent 12

No matter how good you think you look, there’s something about posting a selfie that might frame you in a bad light. An experiment on hundreds of real Instagram users has now found those who post a lot of selfies come across as less likeable, less successful, more insecure, and less outgoing. These negative perceptions

The wreck of what may be the most famous and infamous sea vessel in history has been visited by humans for the first time in almost 15 years – revealing an incredible state of natural deterioration hidden deep within the Atlantic Ocean. Rusting in silent isolation at a depth of 3,810 metres (about 12,500 feet)

You might have heard the maxim that with 10,000 hours of practice you can become an expert at anything. Well, according to a new study of 39 violinists, that might be too optimistic. You see, that 10,000-hour ‘rule’ was first proposed by another study of musicians – including violinists – back in 1993. It concluded

High in the Himalayas of India, amid the snow-capped peaks, nestles a mystery. Roopkund Lake is a shallow body of water filled with human bones – the skeletons of hundreds of individuals. It’s these that give the lake its other name, Skeleton Lake, and no one knows how the remains came to be there. One

Vulnerable spadefoot tadpoles eat their smaller competitors to speed towards toadhood as quickly as possible. Gulls and pelicans are among bird species that eat hatchlings for food or to prevent the spread of disease. In insect species such as the praying mantis or the Australian redback spider, males offer their bodies as a final gift

Deep in western Russia, if you know where to look, you’ll find a small collection of ragged scrap metal and crumbled concrete. Which isn’t that exciting. But if you rifle through the rubble, you will find a large metal disc bolted to the ground. This isn’t just any old disc – it’s the welded-shut cap

Storytelling is one of humanity’s most powerful tools. Commonly used by educators, politicians and advertisers, stories have the power to influence and teach, inspire and persuade. But there’s been some debate over whether stories help convince people of facts, or have the opposite effect. Now a new study has shown that it depends on the

The self-declared daredevil and Flat Earther “Mad” Mike Hughes is preparing for another launch in his homemade, steam-powered rocket in the Californian desert. His final goal is to reach the edge of space, but how likely is he to succeed and see that the Earth is actually spherical? Hughes’ first rocket launch was in 2014,

Climate deniers are often featured by the mainstream media as a way to ‘balance’ their reporting, and yet for most of this century, climate coverage has been neither fair nor balanced. Since the early 2000s, scientific dispute over the reality of human-caused climate change has virtually come to an end. But you wouldn’t necessarily know

Something weird can happen to the ears of people who hang out in the icy cold of the ocean’s embrace. Small spurs of bone start growing in the ear canals, triggered by the irritation the cold temperatures cause on the inner ear. It’s a condition seen a lot in surfers, so it’s known as surfer’s

Human semen, If you separated it out, would on average hold a 50/50 mix  of sex chromosomes – half of the sperm bearing the Y chromosome, and half the X chromosome. Despite all the myths about choosing the sex of your baby through superstitious rituals, there’s not a lot we can do about changing those odds. And

The human brain is a remarkable thing. It can do things our primate relatives are thousands – maybe even millions – of years of evolution away from, and our most complex machines are not even close to competing with our powers of higher consciousness and ingenuity. And yet, those 80 billion or so neurons are also incredibly fragile. If

There have been plenty of claims about what being left-handed means, and whether it changes the type of person someone is – but the truth is something of an enigma. Myths about handedness appear year after year, but researchers have yet to uncover all of what it means to be left-handed. So why are people

What lengths would you go to if your survival truly depended upon it? Probably more than you give yourself credit for. Humans are versatile creatures, and throughout our history we’ve appeared in unexpected places, such as one mountainous area in Ethiopia 45,000 years ago. Possibly due to a lack of water in the valleys, these

What can be done with the deserted land in Ukraine after Chernobyl’s catastrophic nuclear disaster? Three decades on, researchers have an idea. Introducing “Atomik” vodka: a new spirit produced from crops grown in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. A team of British scientists worked alongside colleagues in Ukraine to produce the vodka, made with grain and water

The 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler was one of the first to muse about the structure of snowflakes. Why are they so symmetrical? How does one side know how long the opposite side has grown? Kepler thought it was all down to what we would now call a “morphogenic field” – that things want to have

After being removed by Facebook, the event called “Storm Area 51” has been resurrected. But no advanced extraterrestrial technology was behind the move: according to a spokesperson for Facebook, the event was removed by “mistake”. The BBC reports that the founder of the group, Mathew Roberts, received a message on Saturday claiming that his tongue-in-cheek

What’s your usual sleeping pattern? If you’re happily tucked up in bed by 8 pm or even earlier, then you might have what’s known as advanced sleep phase (ASP). It’s a sleep pattern that’s traditionally been considered incredibly rare – after all, these so-called ‘advanced sleepers’ are naturally waking up at around 4 or 5 am,

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident is widely considered one of the worst nuclear disasters. On 26 April 1986, the core of a nuclear reactor at the plant opened during a routine safety test, sending plumes of radioactive material into the air. The explosion and subsequent fires released widespread contamination across Europe, but the most

Facebook has removed a mega-viral event called “Storm Area 51”, claiming it violated community standards. Before it was removed, the tongue-in-cheek event amassed more than 2 million Facebook users, grabbing the attention of the mainstream media. The idea, according to the even description, was to invite an army of memelords and alien enthusiasts to raid

If you spend any time on social media, it can seem that the general public doesn’t have much confidence in science. People are still arguing that Earth is flat, vaccinations cause autism, or climate change isn’t caused by humans, while science communicators keep providing evidence on topics that have been considered settled for decades or even centuries.

To many, ancient Egypt is synonymous with the pharaohs and pyramids of the Dynastic period starting about 3,100BC. Yet long before that, about 9,300-4,000BC, enigmatic Neolithic peoples flourished. Indeed, it was the lifestyles and cultural innovations of these peoples that provided the very foundation for the advanced civilisations to come. But who were they? As

When Jim Stauffer’s elderly mother Doris passed away at the age of 74, he decided to donate her brain to science. Doris had suffered from dementia, and he wanted to help find a cure for brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The Biological Resource Centre (BRC) in Arizona seemed like the right option. It was even

He had been in his grave so long that when his family dug him up to burn his heart, the organ had decomposed and was not there. Desperate to stop him from stalking them, they took his head and limbs and rearranged them on top of his ribs in the design of a skull and

If we’re being really honest, those trivia stars that know way more general knowledge than they should are already pretty insufferable. But I have bad news – they’re about to get worse. A small study has shown those with good general knowledge might have really efficiently wired brains. And you can bet that they’ll tell

Dozens of tourists were injured after a massive wave came crashing down on them in a “tsunami pool” in northeast China, according to Chinese media outlets. City officials from Longjing announced that 44 tourists were injured in the unexpected swell, and that the pool is closed for investigation, the South China Morning Post reported. A

The ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion was once a bustling trading port. Now, it lies 45 metres (about 148 feet) under the Mediterranean Sea. Recently, divers have revealed perhaps the best find since the submerged city was rediscovered two decades ago. In their most recent underwater expedition, Egyptian and European experts have found significant remains

A bizarre and brilliantly effective optical illusion going viral on the internet tricks your brain into seeing a colour image… but if you look closer, you’ll notice the photo you’re staring at is only black and white. Created by digital media artist and software developer Øyvind Kolås as a visual experiment, the technique, which Kolås

For 38 excruciating minutes, Hawaii feared the worst. In January 2018, phones all over the Aloha State were buzzing with an emergency alert of unprecedented, catastrophic scale. “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII,” the text message said. “SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Fortunately for the more than 1 million Hawaiians lying in

It may sound strange at first, but a team of researchers in Australia has come up with a method to predict your personality traits using just the accelerometer in your phone. Well, that and your call and messaging activity logs. Also, the system works for some traits better than others. But it’s an interesting take

When it comes to lavish funeral arrangements, you’d have to do well to beat the mystery soldier buried some 2,000 years ago in the south of England. A new exhibition is about to reveal some of the details of this man and his burial site, described as “the most elaborately equipped warrior’s grave” ever found

Explorer Robert Ballard has found enough sunken ships to start a modest ghost fleet. The Titanic. The carrier USS Yorktown lost at Midway. President John F. Kennedy’s patrol boat sunk in the warm Solomon Sea. Ancient vessels in the Black Sea knotted with mariner skeletons. Now, after decades of finding the nearly unfindable, Ballard will

YouTube is far more than just a video-sharing website. The online platform, which hosts almost two billion users each month, is an archive, a laboratory, a news outlet and an educational tool. It’s also a goldmine for climate conspiracy theories. But if you are using YouTube to learn about climate science, an exploratory research project

Laying on the muddy floor of the frigid inland Baltic Sea, scientists have found an almost perfectly preserved and intact shipwreck, undisturbed for hundreds of years. Based on its incredible preservation, archaeologists have been able to date the ship back to the Renaissance. That’s around the late 15th or early 16th century CE, the time

Instagram is running a social media experiment in Australia and elsewhere to see what happens when it hides the number of likes on photos and other posts. If you have an Instagram account, you’ll get to see the numbers but your followers won’t – at least, not automatically. They will be able to click and

To the disgust of many of our readers, we recently discovered that keeping leeches as pets is actually a thing. And yeah, it’s certainly… a bit different. But in light of humanity’s disconnect with nature, and our concerning lack of knowledge about parasitic creatures, the idea that some of us are nurturing these parasites is also, uh, fascinating.

Hundreds of protesters gathered at the base of a mountain in Hawaii on Monday to block the construction of a billion-dollar telescope on its peak. To Native Hawaiians, Mauna Kea is a sacred place. To astronomers, it is one of the best places on earth to observe space. Hawaiian elders, known as kupuna, sat in

You might be familiar with getting hooked on booze, chocolate, or caffeine. But what about the sweet, sweet thrill of an information overload? Info can act like snacks, money and drugs on our brain, new research has found. That means we tend to seek out an information hit whether or not it’s going to be

Egypt has opened its 4,600-year-old “bent” pyramid to visitors, who can travel deep inside its tunnels to visit the chambers inside. As of Saturday, visitors can walk through a 256-foot (78-meter) tunnel, down to two chambers inside the pyramid, Reuters reported. The pyramid, built for Pharaoh Sneferu around 2,600 BC, looks different to Egypt’s most

In episode four of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, Soviet officials assess the damage of a 1986 power-plant explosion, which released plumes of radioactive material into the air. The roof of the power plant, they argue, has become “the most dangerous place on Earth” – a place where two minutes of exposure would cut a person’s

A giant human settlement dating back to the Stone Age has been discovered near Jerusalem, and researchers say it’s not just the largest of its kind in Israel, but one of the most monumental such cities ever found. The sprawling Neolithic mega-site, unearthed in the neighbourhood of Motza about 5 kilometres (3 miles) to the