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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…

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…

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…

When a skater glides on ice, his/her body weight is applied downward on a small area on the surface of the ice. The pressure generated is strong enough to make the ice melt at the point of contact. The friction…

Imagine a young mother inside a fast car, holding a baby on her lap. The baby actually weighs 10 kg, but all of a sudden there is a jerk and the mother undergoes a sense of unreality. Her infant now…

Horses have both binocular vision and monocular vision. Binocular vision is used when their eyes and ears are focused on something in front of them. And monocular vision is used when they use each eye separately to watch movements —…

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”….

Around 43,000 years ago, the first frontmen of Homo sapiens colonised Europe. They replaced the Neanderthals in the region approximately 3,000 years later — violently, per French palaeontologist Marcellin Boule (the first person to analyse a Neanderthal). One hypothesis about…

The significance of certain objects is so deeply anchored in our psyche that we rely on them even when their intended function is out of context. A bike helmet suggests safety even when the wearer is just sitting on a…

When Dr. Emily Carlson watched 73 people dance across eight genres of music, she didn’t realize she was standing on the cusp of a breakthrough. Her original idea was to use machine learning to identify the genre each dancer got…

Iron replaced bronze as the prime material for tool and weapon production during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The replacement was gradual — at different times in different regions. There were things made of iron…

Biological, social and economic schemes are some of the real-world systems we are most familiar with. These systems evolve all the time. And the dynamics of all such systems have one trait. They show markedly augmented levels of activity over…