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One of the most prominent theories in modern science is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Bertrand Russell said there is nothing uncertain about it, but let it pass. The point is uncertainty is a natural part of all scientific research. At the…

Godzilla pops up in the Big Apple after viciously handling some ships and leaving a few imposing footprints on tropical islands. It stops by Madison Square Garden, stops to visit the Chrysler Building, goes on a walk through Central Park,…

Light is at the core of much of what astronomers do — light scattered, absorbed and re-emitted in clouds of gas and dust. And Dr Charlie Jeynes knows that light is also at the core of a diverse range of…

If you unearth an artefact with the same shape and used for the same purpose in two or more differentregions, it could be the bespoke result of cultural diffusion — but not necessarily. Archaeologist Sue O’Connor studied five fish hooks…

Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran once remarked that people would never understand each other unless their language is reduced to half a dozen words. The truth is that often we need only that many words (a small amount of information) for…

One bizarre remark on Mona Lisa’s smile is that she doesn’t smile at all; it’s a visual illusion. And wasn’t Leonardo da Vinci a master in optics? Turns out, half of the claim is true — literally! Neurologists Lucia Ricciardi…

Can advertising rely on coffee breaks to make people more open to persuasion? This won’t deter the average office worker from taking his or her next coffee break, but stress is always a factor at the bottom of an empty…

Tentacled aliens from outer space are familiar to us from science fiction, but the octopus may be as alien an intelligence as we can meet on Earth. “It’s an alternative model for intelligence,” said Dominic Sivitilli. “It gives us an…

A condenser turns a substance from its gaseous state to its liquid state — by cooling it. Historically, condensers were always oriented vertically so as to allow water to drain by gravity. But then, about five years ago, Virginia Tech…

Any old package of African hunters’ tall tales usually contains awesome descriptions of elephant behaviour. Some stories hinge on the notion of elephant graveyards where the grand animals wander off to die. While previous studies question their validity outside the…

Given that you are not a drummer, you can perform fine motor tasks only with one hand and you will struggle to play different rhythms with both hands simultaneously. Drummers, however, “can do things that are impossible for untrained people”….

While Indians hold the simplistic notion of democracy as anybody’s right to use ear-damaging crackers and amplifiers anywhere any time, civilised people take a different view. One harsh criticism against the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration, the US body regulating civil…