Diamonds on Earth are pretty rare, despite being a girl’s best friend. But on ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune, it is expected that diamonds rain down through the atmosphere. Now, lab experiments suggest that sparkly precipitation happens at lower temperatures and pressure than previously thought, making it more common not just in the … Read moreDiamonds May Rain Across The Universe More Often Than Than We Thought
This article first appeared in Issue 15 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. We exist in an increasingly online world that bombards us with information at every opportunity. A simple scroll on our favorite websites, news outlets, and social media platforms can bring a torrent of (sometimes questionable) content down on our heads, and it can be a … Read morePseudoscience Vs Science: How To Spot The Difference
At least one of the gravitational waves detected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors might not be from black holes or neutron stars, but something even more exotic, physicists have claimed. Known as boson stars or dark matter stars, we have no other evidence these objects even exist. However, they would be useful in explaining … Read moreMerging Dark Matter Stars Could Have Produced An Unusual Gravitational Wave
South Korea announced today a new law that will aim to end the sale and slaughter of dogs for their meat by 2027. Currently, it is estimated that South Korea has around 1,600 dog meat restaurants and 1,150 dog farms in 2023, according to BBC News. In the country, dog meat stew, or “boshintang”, is … Read moreSouth Korea Passes Law To End Sale And Slaughter Of Dog Meat By 2027
While there is no shortage of complicated questions to ask about the universe, sometimes it’s fun to go back to basics. In that spirit, here’s the answer to a question people have asked time and time again on the Internet: “If there’s no oxygen in space, how is the Sun on fire?” First off, there … Read morePeople Are Asking If There Is No Oxygen In Space, How Is The Sun On Fire?
Ah, the honeymoon phase – when everything is new and exciting, and you can’t keep your hands off each other. It’s thrilling, nerve-wracking… and a really bad time to be making important financial or career decisions. For many years, science wasn’t clear on exactly why our brains go to mush when we’re falling in love, … Read moreWe May Finally Know Why Being In Love Scrambles Our Brains
Fire ant rafts enable these invertebrates to survive floods by aggregating in floating islands of living organisms. For a long time, their formation was thought to come down to something called the “Cheerios effect” – but new research has revealed that actually, pheromones could be a better fit as a trigger for the phenomenon. The … Read moreFire Ants May Not Use The “Cheerios Effect” To Make Rafts After All
Have you ever driven through what appeared from a distance to be an active patch of rainfall coming from dense cloud cover, just to find the land underneath dry as a bone? That’s virga, baby! Virga, from the Latin word meaning “rod” or “branch”, refers to the wisps attached to the underside of rain clouds … Read moreVirga: When Rain Vanishes Before It Hits The Ground
You might remember back in 2017 when one particularly mind-blowing GIF went viral after baffling the Internet with its strange ability to evoke auditory hallucinations. The GIF itself was silent, and yet 70 percent of people reported being able to hear it. What on Earth was going on? We’re referring to this skip-jumping pylon, which, … Read moreCan You “Hear” This Silent GIF? Science Explains Why
For a quarter of a century, we have known that the universe is experiencing an accelerated expansion. We call the culprit dark energy, but we are yet to know its true nature. In the current best model, dark energy is a cosmological constant – its value at every point in space and time is always … Read moreDark Energy May Be Getting Diluted As The Universe Expands