They were teenage computer geeks, bespectacled kids from Seattle who taught themselves programming from a Teletype terminal, learned the basics of business from Fortune magazine and dreamed of “a computer in every home and on every desk.” Paul Allen was the self-described “idea man,” the shy son of librarians. Bill Gates was the business-oriented partner

Books are pretty amazing – gateways to other worlds, compact parcels bursting with knowledge. And if you grow up surrounded by books, you’re going to get a bit of a boost in life compared to non-readers. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new study, which found that teens who leave school before graduating, but

It’s been several months since the late Stephen Hawking passed away, but posthumous writings by the groundbreaking scientist show the great man still had much more to tell us. Just days after Hawking’s final academic paper was published online, the world-famous physicist is back in the spotlight for a different reason: a stark, controversial prediction

The remains of a child unearthed in a 5th century CE Italian cemetery are indicative of the unease that must have been felt in the region as a malaria outbreak ravaged the population. The 10-year-old child was given what is known as a “vampire burial” – with a large rock placed in the body’s mouth,

A revolution in genomics is creeping into economics. It allows us to say something we might have suspected, but could never confirm: money trumps genes. Using one new, genome-based measure, economists found genetic endowments are distributed almost equally among children in low-income and high-income families. Success is not. The least-gifted children of high-income parents graduate

In a time of crazy political and world news, it’s often easy to overlook some of the ridiculously cool things happening in science. To make sure you don’t miss out, we’ve put together this shareable image highlighting the best science news of the past week. From ‘moonmoons’ (yes, that’s a real thing) and Stephen Hawking’s

Biologists have grown human retina tissue from scratch to learn how the cells that let us see in color are made. The work may lay the groundwork for therapies for eye diseases such as color blindness and macular degeneration. It also establishes lab-created “organoids”—artificially grown organ tissue—as a model to study human development on a cellular

It’s a question that’s been repeated in high schools and colleges throughout time, published throughout the media, and even has studies to back it up – do you look the same when you orgasm as you do when you, say, stub your toe? According to urban myth, the answer would be yes. But new research shows that

The genetic sleuthing approach that broke open the Golden State Killer case could potentially be used to identify more than half of Americans of European descent from anonymous DNA samples, according to a provocative new study that highlights the unintended privacy consequences of consumer genetic testing for ancestry and health. The idea that people who

How does the brain make sense of all the information we’re bombarded with every second of every day? It’s a complicated question, but researchers have invented two new illusions that give us some clues – one optical and one auditory. And they both trick the brain into travelling back in time to fill in gaps

Carving giant, monolithic statues under the hot Polynesian Sun is thirsty work. So without freshwater rivers and springs to sustain them, how did thousands of the traditional Rapa Nui people of Easter Island survive? We might finally have an answer to this historic mystery, and it’s one that reconciles early European accounts of the Rapa

It might sound a little offensive, but your body is a museum, full of ancient relics no one really needs anymore. From your wisdom teeth to that weird way some of us can wiggle our ears, so much of how we ended up as humans reflects what our animal ancestors needed for survival. As this

With the modern textile industry at our fingertips, it’s trivial to have socks with all kinds of patterns – including the ever-popular stripes. But even Ancient Egyptians had a love for the stripey sock, and now we finally know how they achieved their vivid dye colours. Scientists from the British Museum have applied a non-invasive

Anonymous British graffiti artist Banksy has pulled off another stunt that seized the attention of the art world — this time at the expense of his own work. On Friday, a Banksy painting titled “Girl with Red Balloon” was being auctioned at Sotheby’s in London. The spray-painted and acrylic piece depicted a little girl extending

I need a caffeine boost in the morning to properly function. And I’m not alone – according to a Reuters study, 65 percent of Americans have coffee every day, and more than 85% drink it regularly. But, according to CNBC, there’s a specific time of day you should drink your coffee if you want to feel the best

A psychologist In the hit BBC TV show, Killing Eve, Villanelle, a psychopathic assassin, tells Eve, a security service operative, “You should never call a psychopath a psychopath. It upsets them.” She then pouts her lip in an imitation of someone feeling upset. Most people think they know what a psychopath is: someone who has

We don’t need to tell you world news is pretty grim right now – if you use social media, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid articles about bubbling permafrost, drug-resistant gonorrhoea, and deadly obesity treatments. And that’s just the science headlines. But despite all the doom and gloom, in reality there are a whole bunch

Doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit stumbled on a very strange case last year – when life support was turned off for four terminal patients, one of them showed persistent brain activity even after they were declared clinically dead. For more than 10 minutes after doctors confirmed death through a range of observations, including

An eight-year-old Swedish-American girl named Saga Vanecek has sealed her fate as a future queen of legend – in July, she pulled a possibly 1,500 year-old pre-Viking era sword from a lake in Sweden. Sweden has been hit by an intense drought this year, which lowered the water levels in the Vidöstern lake where the epic

It’s little secret that Neanderthals and our ancestors intimately enjoyed each other’s company. The legacy of this occasional genetic mixing persists in the form of Neanderthal DNA that many modern humans continue to carry. Exactly how this exchange benefited us has been a bit of a mystery. A new study argues that we have Neanderthals

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a physicist, a philosopher, and a medievalist got together and decided to hoax cultural studies journals with a score of fake research papers. The story is familiar, but this time the joke is far bigger. Their intention was to expose the shoddy standards that count for publishing

The next time you’re standing at the edge of a scenic cliff or on top of a waterfall, take care before snapping a quick selfie. It could be the last thing you do. More than 250 people worldwide have died while taking selfies in the last six years, according to a new study from researchers

 The 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter for their work that harnessed evolutionary principles to create new proteins. Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology, won one half of the prize “for the directed evolution of enzymes.” George

Scientists have mapped out how choice overload works in the brain, showing how our minds can back off from making a decision if the number of options gets too big. This kind of indecision has been noted in previous studies, but this new research identifies the areas of the brain that help us make a

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 100 billion or so neurons are also incredibly fragile. If

We know, we know, there’s so much internet to read, and so little time. That’s why we’ve been rounding up the week’s most interesting science news for a quick catch-up, with a bonus quiz challenge to keep it entertaining. Answers are at the bottom of the page. Have fun! 1. A Renowned Mathematician Announced He

In the autumn of 1929, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her husband Charles flew across the Yucatán Peninsula. With Charles at the controls, Anne snapped photographs of the jungles just below. She wrote in her journal of Maya structures obscured by large humps of vegetation. A bright stone wall peeked through the leaves, “unspeakably alone and

Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There’s also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of

In 1954, archaeologist Samuel Lothrop described the horror show of an ancient burial site he’d excavated in Panama. Hacking, mutilation, sacrifice, people buried alive, cannibalism, flesh stripped from bones, decapitation for the purpose of trophy-taking – it was all there. Since then, the paper has been cited over 35 times as evidence of the culture’s

An ancient Egyptian text more than 1,300 years old, which would originally have been used as a magic spell, has finally been deciphered – and it seems like love was the goal. Today of course, many of us might just use a dating app instead. The spell or “magic recipe” includes an image showing two

To startup founder and Stanford Medical graduate Jesse Karmazin, blood is the next big government-approved drug. Karmazin recently launched Ambrosia Medical – a startup that fills the veins of older people with fresh blood from young donors – in the hopes that the procedure will help conquer ageing by rejuvenating the body’s organs. The company

He had rations to last just one week. But somehow an Indonesian teenager who drifted out to sea in a floating wooden shack managed to survive 49 days before being rescued by a passing freighter. Aldi Novel Adilang, from the Indonesian province of North Sulawesi, endured a terrifying ocean voyage when the remote fishing hut

One of the world’s most renowned mathematicians showed how he solved the 160-year-old Riemann hypothesis at a lecture on Monday – and he will be awarded US$1 million if his solution is confirmed. Sir Michael Atiyah, who has won the two biggest prizes in mathematics – the Fields Medal and Abel Prize – took the

Galileo Galilei had one of the brightest scientific minds we’ve ever seen. Amongst his many achievements was helping to finally cement the idea that Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the other way around – but a newly discovered letter reveals how he toned down his views to avoid angering the church. The note was

If you were trying to convince another human that you yourself are also human, what would you say? Probably something about emotions, right? That might work – but other humans are more likely to believe your humanity if you talk about bodily functions. Specifically, the word ‘poop’. At least, that’s the finding from a study

New research with mice may upend our understanding of the connection between the gut and the brain, as well as appetite. If you’ve ever felt nauseous before an important presentation, or foggy after a big meal, then you know the power of the gut-brain connection. Scientists now believe that a surprising array of conditions, including

Scientists in Japan made progress recently in the quest to combat infertility, creating the precursor to a human egg cell in a dish from nothing but a woman’s blood cells. The research is an important step toward what scientists call a “game-changing” technology that has the potential to transform reproduction. The primitive reproductive cell the

Another week, another round of terrific stories – there’s so much in the world to perpetually keep us amazed. But if you haven’t caught up with this weeks’ news, we have a simple solution. Not only can you catch up with the most exciting ScienceAlert stories of the week, you can also have a crack

Guests at a hotel in Sydney, Australia had to be taken to hospital after a staff member cleaning the pool mistakenly mixed pool chlorine with hydrochloric acid – creating a cloud of poisonous chlorine gas that seeped through the hotel building. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), 30 guests were treated on location at

Many of us spend hours every day tethered to our devices, pawing at the screen to see if it will deliver a few more likes or emails, monitoring the world and honing our online presence. Social networking platforms such as Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are supposed to make us feel more connected. Yet

It’s been in the pipeline for years: a sprawling, technological mass surveillance network the likes of which the world has never seen. And it’s already been switched on. China’s “Social Credit System” – which is expected to be fully operational by 2020 – doesn’t just monitor the nation’s almost 1.4 billion citizens. It’s also designed

My Wife and My Mother-in-Law is one of the most well-known optical illusions in the world. It hinges on facial perception: You can either see a young woman turning away or the profile of an older woman staring solemnly towards the left side of the drawing. However, you can only see one at a time.

Bacteria deep in our intestines are capable of producing electricity, a new study has discovered, and researchers have also worked out how these single-celled organisms do it – by breaking down sugar as part of their metabolic processes. Not only could that help us understand more about how our own digestive system works, it might

Many of us have been there. Subtly tweaking the margins, increasing only the punctuation size across the board, dragging out paragraphs or adding more block quotes, all in an effort to finally get to an assignment’s minimum page count. Now, there’s a sneaky new typeface that claims to boost the page count of your essay

When darkness fell, the child began to sing. Almost every evening, the shrill voice – somewhere distant and alone – would endlessly call out the same haunting nursery rhyme in the dead of night. It’s the stuff of nightmares, and it was driving Alice Connington mad. The 34-year-old mother of two, who lives in Ipswich

Archaeologists excavating the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple have made the exquisite discovery of a sandstone sphinx statue that’s been hidden for thousands of years.  The statue was found in the pharaonic temple of Kom Ombo, near the town of Aswan, as researchers were draining groundwater from the site, Mostafa Waziri of the Egyptian

If you’re the sort of person who walks away from a conversation feeling awkward about what you said and whether you left a bad impression, you’re far from alone. The good news is new research shows we’re likely to underestimate how much we’re liked by relative strangers. So cheer up! It takes time for somebody

Personality tests are hugely popular, though if you ask working psychologists, they’ll tell you the results are little better than astrological signs. But a new study, based on huge sets of personality data representing 1.5 million people, has persuaded one of the staunchest critics of personality tests to conclude that maybe distinct personality types exist,