Science & Technology

Shrödinger’s cat is world famous, but what does it really mean? Robert Couse-Baker/Flickr, CC BY-SA Alessandro Fedrizzi, Heriot-Watt University and Mehul Malik, Heriot-Watt University Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and intriguing. When the …

Andrii Vodolazhskyi/Shutterstock Joshua Jowitt, Newcastle University The story could have been straight out of science fiction – scientists have grown human brain cells in a lab, and taught them to play the video game Pong, similar to squash or tennis. But this didn’t happen on the big screen. It happened in a lab in Melbourne, Australia, and it raises the …

Many hunter gatherers have a long history of egalitarianism. DevonJenkin Photography/Shutterstock Ruth Mace, UCL READER QUESTION: Many people assume the patriarchy has always been there, but surely this isn’t the case? How did it really originate? Matt, 48, London. The patriarchy, having been somewhat in retreat in parts of the world, is back in our faces . In Afghanistan, the …

Animation of the Dart mission. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL Stefania Soldini, University of Liverpool Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft is designed to be a one hit wonder. It will end its days by crashing into an asteroid at 24,000 kilometres per hour on September 26. Launched from Earth in November 2021, Dart is about the size of a …

fran_kie/Shutterstock Harry Cliff, University of Cambridge and Tim Gershon, University of Warwick Physicists at Cern have discovered a plethora of new exotic particles being created in the collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider over the past few years. So many have been found in fact, that our collaboration (LHCb), which has discovered 59 out of 66 recent particles, has …

The Milky Way above a single MeerKAT antenna in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Inset: EHT image of the Milky Way black hole. SARAO, EHT Roger Deane, University of the Witwatersrand and Iniyan Natarajan, University of the Witwatersrand Astronomers have revealed the first image of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The …

DNA testing is becoming more popular. Shutterstock Turi King, University of Leicester A law passed on April 1 2005 will have life-changing consequences for families across the UK from next year. Anyone conceived from a donated sperm, egg or embryo from that day onward can find out the identity of their donor parents once they reach adulthood. This means that …

It’s never long before the maddening refrain from the back seats. Travel_Master/Shutterstock Ruth Ogden, Liverpool John Moores University As we approach the end of the school holidays, parents across the country are saying the same thing: “If I had a pound for every time I heard ‘are we nearly there yet?’, I’d be rich.” Having three young children myself, I …

Our brains evolved in a world without reading. Semnic/Shutterstock Derek Hodgson, University of York The part of the brain that processes visual information, the visual cortex, evolved over the course of millions of years in a world where reading and writing didn’t exist. So it’s long been a mystery how these skills could appear some 5,000 years ago, with our …

The evidence is mounting for the effectiveness of psilocybin in treating depression. Cannabis_Pic/Shutterstock Clare Tweedy, University of Leeds Up to 30% of people with depression don’t respond to treatment with antidepressants. This may be down to differences in biology between patients and the fact that it often takes a long time to respond to the drugs – with some people …