A Little Bit Of Science

This week, AI is casually reaching for the nuclear button, a Norwegian scientist has accidentally recreated something that looks a lot like Havana Syndrome, and a brain lesion has turned a marathon runner into an intense foodie. It is a neat little trio of stories that sits right on the edge of science fiction, except the uncomfortable part is that it is all real.

We start with simulated war games where major AI models were put in ...

This week we have hippos with hidden bits, hearts that take a mechanical detour, and a medical case study that will make you sit down and reconsider every life choice that led you to having a body. It is science at its best and worst, fascinating, useful, and deeply inconvenient.

We start at the zoo, where hippo castration is a real population control tool, partly to manage breeding and partly to reduce aggression. The catch is hip...

What happens to the economy if aliens show up? Not the movie version. The real version where markets panic, confidence collapses, and everyone suddenly forgets how money is supposed to work. This week, we dig into the idea that confirming UFOs or UAPs could trigger an ontological shock that rattles financial systems in ways no central bank has a policy for.

Then we head into dream engineering, where researchers are testing whether ...

Winter Olympians are allegedly gaming their suit seams for extra lift, the ocean is still capable of throwing an absolutely giant wall of water at your face with no warning, and somewhere in Queensland, a blob of pitch is taking nearly a century to prove it is technically a liquid. This week, we bounce from sports cheating to monster waves to the slowest experiment on Earth, with science doing what it does best and refusing to be t...

This week, we bounce between sex, psychedelics, and infectious disease, and somehow it all hangs together by the end. We unpack research on porn use that suggests the real issue is not how often people watch it, but why they are watching in the first place, with motivation shaping the impact on emotional and sexual wellbeing.

Then we head into the world of magic mushrooms, where psilocybin is being studied for potential health effe...

Everyone wants to live forever, dogs are out here doing actual jobs, and someone has tried to work out where heaven might be using astronomy. We dig into the strange science of longevity, including research suggesting reproduction and lifespan might be linked in uncomfortable ways. Then they meet the working dogs sniffing out invasive species, guarding airport runways, and generally making the rest of us look lazy.

From there, thin...

The FBI’s search for Bigfoot shows that even serious agencies can get swept up in a good mystery. Their investigation ended with a misidentified animal instead of a legendary creature, but the files are still a treasure for anyone fascinated by conspiracies and the unknown. Sometimes, the search is more interesting than the answer.

Meanwhile, scientists in Queensland have been busy breaking down the secrets of your favourite ...

AI is giving people a confidence boost they might not deserve, especially among those who consider themselves tech-savvy. Studies show that using AI for problem-solving leads many to overestimate their own abilities, with higher AI literacy actually making users more likely to trust the machine and question themselves less. The smarter we think we are with technology, the more likely we are to fall for its digital flattery.

Meanwhi...

It’s pretty natural for humans to gravitate towards the most attractive person in the room. But do animals do it too? At Stockholm University, researchers decided to see if chickens could spot a hottie. They trained these birds to peck at faces on a screen and found that chickens prefer the same facial features that humans rate as attractive. Apparently, hotness isn’t just a matter of human opinion. Even a chicken can p...

A ventriloquist once ruled the radio waves, captivating millions with stage tricks that made no visual sense but somehow worked perfectly through a speaker. The world’s love for a good illusion runs deep, stretching from ancient oracles channeling voices through their bellies to audiences mesmerised by dummies with invisible lips. Humans have always been drawn to spectacle, even when it requires a leap of imagination.

The wor...

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,...