A Little Bit Of Science

Academics are now seriously debating the ethics of sex with aliens, with questions swirling around intergalactic consent, the boundaries of romance and whether Captain Kirk’s escapades would pass the cosmic sniff test. Some call it unnatural, others say it’s all about happiness and agreement, and a few even claim to have had their own close encounters. Until E.T. shows up with a clear answer, the verdict is equal parts ...

A Rome-based research team discovered poetry can jailbreak AI systems by bypassing safety filters that normal prompts can't crack, making verse a genuine cybersecurity vulnerability. Medieval physicians believed flatulent foods like beans and onions were aphrodisiacs because intestinal gas supposedly enhanced sexual performance, Palmer Luckey, the tech billionaire behind Oculus, now advocates for submarines that tunnel through Eart...

Sika deer on Japan's Yakushima Island let macaque monkeys groom them in exchange for food scraps and sexual mounting, creating what scientists awkwardly call "interspecies sexual behaviour with mutual benefits."

Nederland, Colorado hosts annual "Frozen Dead Guy Day" festivals celebrating Bredo Morstoel, whose body has been preserved in a shed on dry ice for decades after his grandson's cryogenic dreams failed.

Brazilian Butt Lifts ...

Horseshoe theory proposes that political extremes loop back around until far-left and far-right ideologies find disturbing common ground, sharing authoritarian tactics, propaganda methods, and contempt for democratic norms despite claiming opposite values. 

Scientists are using AI to decode brain activity and caption your thoughts, raising serious questions about privacy and future thought-policing. The technology has remarkab...

Scientists in the mid-20th century created "atomic gardens" where they bombarded plants with gamma radiation to induce beneficial mutations like disease resistance and higher yields. Microwaves have been accused of causing cancer, destroying nutrients,and functioning as listening devices.

"Phubbing" - phone snubbing - describes ignoring someone in front of you to look at your phone, and it's become the modern signature of distracti...

A woman survived without a stomach or small bowel after a catastrophic medical episode at her 18th birthday party, proving the human body is more adaptable than we thought. Philosophers and tech billionaires are convinced we're living in a computer simulation, though Canadian physicists disagree and insist our universe is real. And forensic scientists discovered that your DNA floats in the air wherever you breathe, meaning you're l...

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but patterns emerge in the strangest places - like Pentagon pizza orders spiking before major military operations, making pepperoni consumption an unofficial national security indicator. A study of children aged nine to ten found that those playing video games were measurably smarter than TV-watching counterparts, vindicating every parent who gave up the Xbox battle.

The Edelman Trust Barometer ...

Your grandmother was right - a 20-minute nap really can unlock creative genius and trigger Eureka moments. Japanese researchers got caught hiding secret messages in scientific papers to trick AI reviewers into approving their work, which is either brilliantly devious or academic fraud depending on who you ask. And microplastics have officially invaded the most intimate part of human existence: a Florida study found them in penises,...

A third of kids now want to be YouTubers instead of astronauts and half of those kids will probably be named after firearms rather than grandparents. This is either a damning indictment of modern culture or just kids being realistic about which career path actually pays. 

Baby names have become a political statement that reveals more about parents than their children. Blue state families in the USA lean toward traditional, rel...

This week's stories reveal disturbing realities that sound like dystopian fiction but are actually happening. Covert consciousness means some coma patients are fully aware but unable to communicate, screaming internally while doctors discuss pulling the plug. Donald Trump announced plans for a "Golden Dome" missile defense system costing $175 billion to possibly trillions, despite decades of evidence that intercepting ballistic mis...

This week's science stories prove that statistics can be meaningless and humans are disturbingly obedient. Spurious correlations like margarine predicting Maine divorces and Will Smith movies matching Kosovo electricity are hilarious reminders not to trust numbers at face value. Meanwhile, new research validates Milgram's obedience experiments - ordinary people really will electrocute strangers just because someone in a lab coat te...

This week's science stories prove that good intentions create unexpected problems and the most valuable data comes from the weirdest places. Wind farms designed to save the planet are accidentally stealing wind from their neighbours and ancient Chinese poets have been unknowingly creating the world's longest environmental dataset for over a thousand years.

The human brain's relationship with silence takes a disturbing turn in anech...

This week's science stories reveal disturbing trends in human intelligence and technology that could reshape society in uncomfortable ways. The Flynn Effect, which saw global IQ scores steadily rising for over a century, has suddenly plateaued and may be reversing - meaning our species might have hit peak intelligence and is now sliding backwards. Meanwhile, AI companies are capitalising on human loneliness by selling virtual girlf...

If you’ve got a raw milk enthusiast friend, they might be conveniently forgetting that grandma used to boil her "fresh" milk to avoid dying from bacteria poisoning. 

Mind you, it wasn’t all safe in the good old days. In 1978, a Soviet scientist stuck his head in a particle accelerator and got blasted with a proton beam 600 times the lethal dose (and somehow survived). He might be a good candidate for the upcoming E...

This week's little bits of science challenge long-held assumptions and reveal the unexpected dangers lurking in everyday situations. A groundbreaking study on phantom limb syndrome has overturned decades of medical thinking by proving that the mysterious sensations amputees feel aren't caused by brain changes at all - they're likely nerve-related, opening up entirely new treatment possibilities.

Meanwhile, a man with the world's la...

Truth Social's AI chatbot thinks "balanced news" means exclusively quoting Fox News, which is about as balanced as someone hoarding 7,470 browser tabs on a single computer (yes, that actually happened). 

Meanwhile, Australia's deadliest killer isn't the poisonous spider lurking in your toilet - it's the friendly horse in the paddock next door. And if you think that's absurd, wait until you hear about the Russian oligarchs who ...

What is this bizarre world we're living in where AI chatbots are literally poisoning people by recommending Victorian-era bromine cures, while British engineers accidentally drain entire historic canals by pulling chains they thought were harmless?

Today we explore the shocking discovery that some animals can literally breathe through their butts during oxygen emergencies, and uncover the tale of tarantula species with penises so a...

The White House just cancelled two perfectly functioning climate satellites for mysterious reasons, British treasure hunters are going to prison for keeping Viking coins they found with metal detectors, and pineapples were once so expensive that wealthy Georgians rented them just to display at dinner parties. We explore how climate science gets axed despite providing "exceptionally high quality" data, why finding ancient treasure c...