It’s no secret that life can be easier for beautiful people. Studies have shown being good-looking has benefits for your health, intelligence, and helps with making friends. Being physically attractive can also literally pay off, as many people believe it can mean you make more money.   In short, beautiful people are more confident, have more social

People who think their knowledge and beliefs are superior to others are especially prone to overestimating what they actually know, new research suggests. Even after getting feedback showing them how much they didn’t know relevant political facts, these people still claimed that their beliefs were objectively more correct than everyone else’s.   On top of

Research suggests there’s a good scientific reason why some of us struggle to look someone in the eye and hold a conversation with them. It turns out we’re not just awkward, our brains actually can’t handle the tasks of thinking of the right words and focussing on a face at the same time.   The

Since the beginning of last year, 2,000 Finns have been getting money from the government each month — and they are not expected to do anything in return. The participants, ages 25 to 58, are all unemployed and were selected at random by Kela, Finland’s social-security institution.   Instead of unemployment benefits, the participants now

Last year, neuroscientists used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains. What they discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.   We’re used to thinking of the world from a 3-D perspective, so

The deepest dive recorded by the free-diving Bajau Laut people of Southeast Asia was to an impressive 79 metres (259 feet), and the longest time spent underwater by them was just over three minutes.   Although the Bajau do not dive to these depths or for this length of time during their day-to-day fishing, they

As a species, we humans tend to take it for granted that we are the only ones that live in sedentary communities, use tools, and alter our landscape to meet our needs. It is also a foregone conclusion that in the history of planet Earth, humans are the only species to develop machinery, automation, electricity,

An incredibly rare cache of Viking Age treasure has been unearthed on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic sea. Discovered by a 13-year-old boy and his teacher, the find consists of necklaces, pearls, brooches, bracelets, rings and up to 600 silver coins – and some of the treasure has been linked to a

Where the heck are all the aliens? According to a pair of psychologists, it might be us, not them – we could be missing obvious signs of non-terrestrial civilisations out there.   Being a human is weird. There’s so much information our brains need to process for us to function in the world, sometimes we

Near what is today the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, some 1,400 years or so ago, somebody buried a whole bunch of documents in a jar. It’s now been revealed that fragments of one of those manuscripts are somewhat different to the others in this hidden library. For one thing, they’re written in Greek rather

Researchers have determined how satellite DNA, considered to be “junk DNA”, plays a crucial role in holding the genome together. Their findings, published recently in the journal eLife, indicate that this genetic “junk” performs the vital function of ensuring that chromosomes bundle correctly inside the cell’s nucleus, which is necessary for cell survival. And this function appears

In Tibetan Buddhism, the group of tantric techniques known as milam aim to reveal the illusory nature of waking life by having practitioners perform yoga in their dreams. It’s a ritualised version of one of the most mysterious faculties of the human mind: to know that we’re dreaming even while asleep, a state known as

We just can’t resist a good optical illusion. It’s simultaneously grounding and deeply disorienting to feel that our perception of the world around us can lie so dramatically. But it’s also just fun to trick our own brains.   When we think about optical illusions, we’re usually thinking of a subset of illusions called cognitive

Archaeologists have found a fascinating puzzle in the shape of a man’s remains dating back to medieval Italy. It looks like this guy went through life with a knife attached to his arm, in place of his amputated hand.   The skeleton in question was found in a Longobard necropolis in the north of Italy, dating

No. The answer is no.   Remember the Great American Eclipse? Then, too, we were told Nibiru (or Planet X) was coming for us. Except it didn’t. It also didn’t happen in 2003 or in 2012, nor did it strike us on October 15, or November 19 last year. NASA already debunked Nibiru six years

Archaeologists excavating a vast and ancient “city of the dead” in Africa have recovered the largest collection of texts in the mysterious language of the Kushites. Dating back to 2,700 years ago, the find includes extraordinary tablets commemorating the dead.   The items hail from a site called Sedeinga in Sudan, known for the ruins

If you’ve ever read anything about the colonies of bacteria that live on and inside you, you’ll no doubt have come across the neat little ‘fact’ that microbial cells outnumber human cells in your body by a ratio of around 10:1.   You’ll find it in scientific papers, magazine articles, TED talks, and popular science

Though you may not pay attention to it unless you’re sick, you’re always breathing more heavily from one nostril than the other. During the day, the sides switch and the other nostril goes into ‘work mode’, but why?    This process is automated by the aptly named autonomic nervous system, which is the same system

New evidence suggests that the chemical trails ants leave to communicate where to go might not be produced by ants after all – but the microbiome in their abdomens. We’re only just starting to delve into the complex relationship humans have with the microbes our bodies host. Now it looks like insects might have a

At 112 years, Japanese supercentenarian Masazo Nonaka has just been recognised as the world’s oldest man. The new record holder was born on July 25, 1905 – the same year Teddy Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 26th president of the US. The first radio broadcast happened in 1906.   Also, cars looked like this, which

A crazy optical illusion is breaking the internet this week – and no, it’s not just another version of that dress. The mind-bending illusion, which was posted to Reddit just yesterday, has already received over 48,000 upvotes.   This time, you can watch as you lose the ability to perceive colour. Seriously, just look at

We all have them, but what are eyebrows actually for? While eyebrows help to prevent debris, sweat, and water from falling into the eye socket, they serve another important function too – and it’s all to do with how they move, and with human connection.   We already know that our modern minds often reflect

The ancient site of Stonehenge is shrouded in mystery – we don’t know how it was built, or what it was built for. One of the strangest mysteries is why those giant stones were dragged to an unremarkable Salisbury hillside instead of being erected where they were originally found. Now it seems we have an

With a blistering 1.57 million on the Scoville heat scale, the Carolina Reaper is not a chilli to be messed with. But despite its name and gnarled appearance, some people still eat these insanely hot chilli peppers for fun – or peer recognition.   According to a new case study in The British Medical Journal,

In the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia, researchers have found the oldest remains from early humans outside of Africa and the nearby Mediterranean Levant region. It’s a single bone from a Homo sapiens finger, and it’s at least 85,000 to 90,000 years old, according to a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Archaeological excavations in Northern Spain have turned up something incredible. Two wooden tools that, at 90,000 years old, are the oldest of their kind ever found. What’s especially cool is that these tools weren’t made and used by Homo sapiens, but our older cousins – Neanderthals.   The Aranbaltza site on the Iberian Peninsula hosted

Although we use it every day, time is complicated. When we break it up into small pieces, most people are pretty good at organising time, but everything starts to get a bit wobbly when the timescales get larger.   If you keep zooming out on the history of the Universe, at a certain point time

Dreams are so strange and carry so much significance to us that we often feel the need to tell people about our nocturnal adventures, sometimes at tedious length. But if you understand what goes on inside the brain as dreams take their course, they start to make a lot more sense. And dreams are much more

Today’s students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers. Teachers, parents and policymakers certainly acknowledge the growing influence of technology and have responded in kind. We’ve seen more investment in classroom technologies, with students now equipped with school-issued iPads and access to e-textbooks.

Have you ever been listening to a great piece of music and felt a chill run up your spine? Or goosebumps tickle your arms and shoulders? The experience is called frisson (pronounced free-sawn), a French term meaning “aesthetic chills,” and it feels like waves of pleasure running all over your skin. Some researchers have even

It’s a high honour to be called someone’s best friend – just look at the way characters in sitcoms like Friends and How I Met Your Mother argue over which of the gang is their best friend. But the criteria for someone fitting the role of “BFF” is hard to define.   Until now, that

Doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit stumbled on a very strange case last year – when life support was turned off for four terminal patients, one of them showed persistent brain activity even after they were declared clinically dead.   For more than 10 minutes after doctors confirmed death through a range of observations,

Human vision is incredible – most of us are capable of seeing around 1 million colours, and yet we still don’t really know if all of us perceive these colours in the same way.   But there’s actually evidence that, until modern times, humans didn’t actually see the colour blue. As Kevin Loria reported for Business

As historical finds go, it ranks up at the more remarkable end of the scale – archaeologists working in Egypt have uncovered the remains of a rare Greco-Roman temple, including parts of its foundation, the main entrance, and the front courtyard.   The significant discovery was made in Egypt’s Western Desert at a site called

If we’re ever going to make the long trip to Mars and then colonise the place, we’ll need a lot of food. If we can grow our own, even better. In a step that’s getting us closer to off-world farming, scientists on Germany’s Neumayer Station III in Antarctica have just harvested a nice big crop

Archaeologists in Peru have made a stunning discovery: over 50 previously unknown Nazca lines – and some of them are centuries older than the most famous of these magnificent desert drawings.   Most of these mysterious geoglyphs were created by the Nazca people, who lived in the area from 200 to 700 CE. But the

When I was at school, a fair amount of time was put into determining our “learning styles.” Teachers told us that some people learn better visually with pictures, whereas others retained information by reading or making notes.   To be honest, I never worked out what mine was. In a survey, 96 percent of teachers

Some scientific discoveries come about after painstaking, goal-oriented lab work finally yields the result that a researcher is trying to find. But many of the most incredible discoveries in world came about when someone found something they weren’t looking for.   In some cases, these are the result of a true accident. Lucky accidents have

Unless you’re super into typography or have a hand-lettering hobby, you will likely struggle to tell which of the above shapes of the lowercase ‘G’ is correct (if you’re looking at this text, you’re cheating).   That’s okay. As it turns out, most people are in the same boat, despite having seen this letter millions

Give the internet some weird statistic on millennials and it’s gonna have a field day with it. Like this latest one: “a third of millennials believe the Earth is flat”. Except it’s not, and they don’t.   Here’s what happened: in February, the online polling company YouGov conducted a survey on American beliefs about our

Fancy a social media detox? Giving up Facebook can reduce levels of cortisol, a key hormone related to stress, according to a new study. However, the benefits aren’t quite so clear-cut.    Quitting the social network was also shown to lower study participants’ sense of wellbeing, too. And, after the test period of five days, most

The amount of close and comforting contact that young infants get doesn’t just keep them warm, snug, and loved. A 2017 study says it can actually affect babies at the molecular level, and the effects can last for years.   Based on the study, babies who get less physical contact and are more distressed at

The condom challenge is no way to treat your nose. Or your lungs and throat, for that matter. The years-old dangerous dare has resurfaced in recent days as the latest perverse, potentially life-threatening internet challenge.   People attempting the condom-snorting challenge try to shove and inhale an unwrapped condom into one nostril, and then pull

We pierce them. Stick Q-tips in them (please don’t). Carelessly subject them to loud music. Sometimes, we even forget to wash behind them. We may not spend a lot of time thinking about our ears, but we really ought to take better care of them, because they’re essential for making sense of the world around

Researchers recently spotted a miniature stomach, duodenum, and small intestine hidden among the cells of lung tumor samples. Tumors are notoriously mixed up; cells from one part often express different genes and adopt different sizes and shapes than cells from another part of that same tumor. This discovery was still a surprise, however.   The

Conspiracy theories seem to be more prevalent than ever, thanks to the spread of the internet and the flame-fanning of social media, but how do they spread? The answer is more complicated than you might think, according to new research.   These far-out, implausible ideas about life, the Universe, and everything aren’t solely propagated by

You’ve probably seen the classic piece of “internet trivia” in the image above before – it’s been circulating since at least 2003. On first glance, it seems legit. Because you can actually read it, right? But, while the meme contains a grain of truth, the reality is always more complicated.   The meme asserts, citing

Thanks to high school, we’ve all got a pretty good idea about what’s on the periodic table. But whether you’re looking at something common like calcium, iron, and carbon, or something more obscure like krypton and antimony, how well do you know their functions? Could you name just one practical application for vanadium or ruthenium?