Did you know that the sky isn’t actually blue? Perhaps in school you learned about how air scatters light, filtering out red light from the sun, but that is only half the story. While our eyes perceive…
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The Silk Road trial has concluded, with Ross Ulbricht found guilty of running the anonymous online marketplace for illegal goods. But questions remain over how the FBI found its way through Tor, the software…
The news that Google is to get into the ride-hailing scene – the same taxis-that-aren’t-taxis business pioneered by Uber – may have come as a surprise to some. We can speculate that it may even have come…
The seas are vast. And they claim vessels in significant numbers. The yachts Cheeki Rafiki, Niña, Munetra, Tenacious are just some of the more high-profile names on a list of lost or capsized vessels which…
The New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 was one of the greatest expos the world had ever seen. Visitors to Flushing Meadow Park in Queens were invited to see the “world of tomorrow” giving them a first glimpse…
The Earth recently entered a new epoch – the Anthropocene. Since the dawn of modern mechanised industry and the use of fossil fuels, the story goes that human beings have become the dominant force for…
Digital technology and pervasive access to the internet have reshaped many industries, and banking is no exception: Hampden and Co is the latest in a short but growing list of digital-only banks built…
Following the trend of giving catchy names to serious operating system security flaws, the Linux vulnerability revealed recently by security researchers Qualys has been called Ghost. Like Heartbleed and…
Microsoft’s part in a US$70m investment in CyanogenMod has raised many eyebrows: why is Microsoft investing in a popular version of the Android mobile phone operating system, when it has its own competing…
Diseases caused by genetic mutations in the mitochondria – the powerhouses of the cell – can be disabling, or even deadly. That is why mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), otherwise also known as three-person…
This year marks the 200th anniversary since William Smith published his life’s work, a geological map of England and Wales, in 1815. While “Strata Smith” and his map are well-known among geologists, this…
A European scheme to collect and retain information from all air passengers has resurfaced in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, despite having been rejected by the European Parliament in 2013. The…
Human beings don’t merely inhabit the world. They alter it, on an increasingly epic scale. It is said that we now live in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which geology and climate are controlled as much…
Imagine you are asked to mentally arrange the numbers one to nine. Most people will place the numbers along a horizontal line from left to right, so that one is furthest left and nine is furthest right…
The Natural History Museum in London is replacing its skeleton of the long-necked dinosaur Diplodocus – an iconic denizen of the main entrance hall for nearly four decades – with a blue whale skeleton…
Checking social networks is a morning ritual for many, and when that routine is disrupted – as it was recently when Facebook’s servers went down – its absence can come as a surprise. But what also becomes…
BlackBerry, once the must-have device for the sweaty palms of executives and wannabe executives everywhere, has seen its global share of the smartphone market fall to below 1%. So would you still buy this…
Physicists often work unusual hours. You will find them running experiments at 4am and 10pm. This is because, so long as the pertinent conditions inside a lab – such as temperature or light level – are…
A study of 30 major world economies reveals how worldwide internet use continues to expand to more than three billion users, but it also demonstrates also how this growth is being driven by mobile phones…
While stuck in a hotel room I got sucked into watching the 2002 Spider-Man movie. And it struck me that Peter Parker must have an enormously high-protein diet to generate all that spider silk he goes through…
It sounds like something from the pages of books from the 1960s looking to the future: electric cars powered by current drawn from electrified rails beneath the road. However possible such ideas seemed…
Giant pandas aren’t dying like they used to. In the early 1980s, starvation accounted for more than nine out of ten deaths. However, over the past three decades a parasitic gut worm has replaced that as…
A powerful intelligence lobby made up of former defence ministers, police chiefs and intelligence commissioners has emerged in British politics, determined to push for greater powers and resources for…
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is a common refrain. But usually it is not followed by the words “because your neighbours may kill you”. However, this is precisely the scenario faced by some female…
Before Pilkingtons invented plate glass in the mid-19th century, flat panes could not be made. Old windows are uneven. Some once thought this was because glass is a liquid that flows down slowly over the…