Authors: Elisa Rigosi, Researcher in Sensory Biology, Department of Biology, Lund University and David O’Carroll, Professor of Sensory Biology, Department of Biology, Lund University One bee has long been regarded as a benchmark for visual performance: the honeybee drone. These male honeybees (Apis mellifera) have evolved highly specialised eyes for detecting queens during mating flights […]
By 1800, water had already changed once. It was no longer one of nature’s simple terms, but a compound of hydrogen and oxygen (see Is Water H₂O? (1) From Element to Compound). The new chemistry had a powerful account of that change. What it still wanted was a more direct experiment: water itself, giving up […]
Author: Shireen Kassam, Visiting Professor, Health and Wellbeing Research Group, University of Winchester and Dagfinn Aune, Research Fellow, School of Public Health, Imperial College London More than 1.4 billion people worldwide live with high blood pressure (hypertension). It’s the single biggest metabolic risk factor for early death – driving diseases such as heart attacks, strokes […]
Take a walk in London’s Trafalgar Square this summer and wilting under the heat will be all sorts of body sizes, some tall, some short: a real mix of sizes. Picking just two from the crowd to represent the whole human species would be a tall order. But that is exactly what we do when […]
Take a glass of water. Nothing about it seems to ask for a theory. It has no colour worth naming, no dramatic smell, no visible architecture. It runs, freezes, boils, evaporates, dissolves, erodes, circulates and nourishes. It belongs to weather, geology, physiology, cooking and plumbing before it belongs to chemistry. Then science gives us the […]
Author: Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University How do you explore a place where the Sun never shines? China’s space programme will soon embark on one of the most innovative lunar exploration missions in recent years. We’ve known for nearly two decades that some form of water exists on the Moon. What we […]
Authors: Phil Wiseman, Senior Research Fellow and Ernest Rutherford Fellow in Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton and Mark Sullivan, Professor, University of Southampton A 2025 study by South Korean researchers caught the attention of the astronomy community when it suggested that the evidence behind dark energy could be wrong. Dark energy makes up about […]
Artificial Intelligence • Mathematics • Philosophy of science
Author: Melissa Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics, Monash University Some weeks ago, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced ten advances in mathematics and computer science made with their as-yet unreleased model Astra. The discoveries cover a wide range of mathematical fields, including geometry, cryptography and coding theory. These ten are just the latest in a […]
Authors: Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney and Sandra Peter, Director of Sydney Executive Plus, Business School, University of Sydney “We are now, like, in the singularity”. These are the words of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaking on the Relentless podcast on July 25. He added: “I’ve been waiting […]
Authors: María-Luisa Chas-Amil, Catedrática de Economía Aplicada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela and Julia María Touza, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of York As the flames advanced towards the village of Bédar, in the Almería province of Andalusia, the mayor gave a desperate order to ring the church bells to warn residents. It was not […]