Category: 7. SciTech

Scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new kind of material that doesn’t just sit there. It actually lives, grows, and pulls carbon dioxide straight from the air. This living material was designed in collaboration across biology, chemistry, and engineering disciplines and could…

A London-based dentist has uncovered a hidden detail in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man drawing, revealing a special number…

Scientists have identified specific brain cells which respond most to exercise, an advance that could lead to a pill to boost the benefits

Archaeologists have reconstructed the face of a Stone Age Belgian woman and found that she had blue eyes and a dark complexion, shedding more…

Which animal has the sharpest teeth? Shout out to the extinct ‘chainsaw shark’ (Helicoprion) which receives an honourable mention, because it had, what looks like a circular saw jutting out from its bottom jaw.

Terrifying? Yes, but its gnashers were not as piercing as that of another group of…

We know that the world and its various inhabitants, from plants to animals, are still evolving. In fact, some even believe that humans are actively evolving in different parts of the world right now. But a group of plants found in the Galápagos archipelago might be doing the opposite…

Over the last decade, Earth’s oceans have been warming at unprecedented rates, yet one mysterious blob of water, just south of Greenland, has defied this trend. It has stubbornly remained colder than its surrounding waters for over a century now.

“People have been asking why this cold spot…

We’ve long known that some animals depend on the Sun to navigate the world. However, new research may have uncovered the first insect we know of that does the same using the stars and night sky. The stars have long been a navigational tool for humans. For instance, think of the North…

Negative-calorie or zero-calorie foods are controversial despite their popularity on diet websites. The idea is that our bodies use as much (or more) energy to digest a chosen fruit or vegetable as the energy it provides.

But there’s no scientific evidence for this food fad, with even the lowest…

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

The simplest ideas in mathematics can also be the most perplexing.

Take addition. It’s a straightforward operation: One of the first mathematical truths we learn is that 1 plus 1 equals 2. But mathematicians still have many…