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 spend

A lot of what we think we know about psychology might be wrong. A major research initiative, the second of its kind, tried to reconstruct 28 famous classic psychology experiments. But of those 28, only 14 of the experiments yielded the same results, according to research published Monday in the journal Advances in Methods and

A wild turkey has been causing havoc in a Rhode Island town for six months, where it has been blocking traffic, chasing people, and stopping them paying taxes. Three wild turkeys arrived in the town of Johnston in May, but one managed to evade permanent capture the entire time by deploying a number of tactics,

What’s the best way to shut down an awkward politics discussion at the Thanksgiving table before it ruins everyone’s appetite? The answer, obviously, is science. So, in preparation for the upcoming family holiday, here’s a handy list of talking points involving amazing science news you can keep ready for when you need to boldly interrupt

An American tourist was killed by arrows shot by members of the Sentinelese tribe, according to Indian police. The tribe lives an isolated existence on North Sentinel Island. It has almost no contact with the interconnected world, speaks its own language, and lives without modern technology. It’s also off limits for visitors. Dependra Pathak, the

Most people have heard of the gender pay gap, but there’s another form of gender inequity that doesn’t get nearly as much attention. Not only are women getting short-changed in the workforce, studies suggest they are also getting the short end of the stick in the bedroom. Even today, in an age where many women

For the first time, brain tissue grown in a lab has spontaneously exhibited electrical activity, and it looks startlingly similar to human brain activity. More specifically, it resembles the brain activity of premature babies. Now, the report of this startling development is yet to be peer-reviewed, but if confirmed, it could be a huge discovery

For the first time, brain tissue grown in a lab has spontaneously exhibited electrical activity, and it looks startlingly similar to human brain activity. More specifically, it resembles the brain activity of premature babies. Now, the report of this startling development is yet to be peer-reviewed, but if confirmed, it could be a huge discovery

As days, then weeks passed with no contact from the ARA San Juan submarine, Argentines began to accept the fact that what had once been an aging staple of the nation’s naval fleet had been suddenly and tragically transformed into a 60-meter-long metal tomb. But as the nation mourned the anniversary of the San Juan’s

We’ve all heard about the infamous number 666, which is rather cryptically referred to as the “number of the beast” in the New Testament, and has more recently become known as the number of the Antichrist. But what is it about this simple, symmetrical number that’s been giving everyone the heebie jeebies for the past 2,000

Stupid people tend to overestimate their competence, while smart people tend to sell themselves short. As Shakespeare put it in As You Like It: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” That conventional wisdom is backed up by a Cornell University study conducted by social psychologists David

If someone asked you what the worst year in human history was, what would you guess? 1347 CE was pretty bad. That’s the year the Black Death seriously hit Europe. Any of the years of the Holocaust, between 1941 and 1945. Or 1918, the year of the start of the flu pandemic that killed up

Modern medicine’s ability to keep us alive makes it tempting to think human evolution may have stopped. Better healthcare disrupts a key driving force of evolution by keeping some people alive longer, making them more likely to pass on their genes. But if we look at the rate of our DNA’s evolution, we can see

Do you drink freshly brewed coffee to start off your day? Or is a cup of English breakfast tea a better option for you? Your choice could be a result of your genes, and how they affect your experience of bitter flavours. Published today, our new study shows that the likelihood of a person being

A spoonful of celebrity could help the science go down more smoothly. A new study has found that exposure to celebrity opinions on evolution can influence an individual’s own acceptance. Evolution is a basic scientific principle that’s been around for well over a hundred years, yet many people today continue to misunderstand or reject the

Multitasking gets a bad rap. While the ability to juggle several things at once seems like an impressive use of brainpower, evidence suggests it’s bad for productivity and memory, and for our mental energy reserves. Wikipedia even calls it “an apparent human ability”, because many argue multitasking isn’t actually real, but merely a false belief

The crimson pigment is sun-bleached, its eroded lines barely visible against the texture of the plaster. But with effort, you can see a face that once decorated an ancient Christian baptismal in southern Israel. And it’s not what you’d expect. Most historical depictions of Jesus follow a familiar pattern, giving us an iconoclastic image of

Comic-book creator Stan Lee has died, aged 95. The visionary behind huge swathes of the Marvel Universe and the much-loved superheroes that came with it – Spiderman, Black Panther, The Hulk, Black Widow, and the engineering genius Tony Stark just to name a few – has inspired generations of people with his imagination.  His creations

An ancient Egyptian necropolis dating back thousands of years has yielded a bunch of mummies of the sort you might not expect when you hear the word. Instead of important personages, the sarcophagi were hiding dozens of mummified cats, and a rare collection of mummified scarab beetles. And there might be rarer treasure still. While

Another week, another round of great achievements in science – from discovering the oldest figurative cave art we’ve ever seen, to gazing out into the Universe, there is always something new to learn about our world and beyond. Below you’ll find our weekly round-up of last week’s science discoveries in a convenient picture you can

Researchers at Yale University have developed a seriously confusing optical illusion that is proving our human nature has some bizarre quirks. As part of the Neural Correlate Society’s annual optical illusions contest, the Yale researchers developed what they call the “Who’s Chasing Whom?” illusion. Take a look at the video the team developed. What do

Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and

Who were the first Americans? While we have some rough ideas, the answer to this question has long been up for debate. Now, comparisons between two extraordinary sets of ancient American remains has added rich detail to the spread of ancient human populations through the New World more than 13,000 years ago. And it shows

According to historical accounts, the ancient Gauls of Europe 2,000 years ago had a grisly means of commemorating their most prestigious kills: they would embalm the severed heads of these foes, and keep them. Now, for the first time, science has proven that the Gauls did indeed embalm severed heads. The Gauls were fearsome warriors,

If you’ve ever thought your poo is just a bunch of dead cells, think again. Most of it is alive, teeming with billions of microbes. Here’s what studies in healthy adults reveal makes up our poo. Water Our faeces is largely (75 percent) made up of water, although this differs from person to person. Vegetarians

Humanity’s artistic heritage just got a new historical milestone. In a cave wall deep in the forests of the isle of Borneo, archaeologists have just confirmed that a depiction of some sort of cow is the world’s oldest known figurative piece of art. It dates back to between 40,000 and 52,000 years ago, during the

Thanks to the way research is conducted, our perception of human psychology is based largely on subjects who are largely western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic. Which is a little… WEIRD. UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Michael Gurven argues this has to change, and has turned to an isolated indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon to

Sam Ballard swallowed the slug on a dare. The young rugby player from Sydney was a “larrikin” – a “rough-and-tumble” free spirit, his mother said. So when the creature crawled across a table at a party in 2010 and his buddies dared him to eat it, her son accepted the challenge, she said. “Twenty-year-old boys,

Somewhere on the bottom of the world, 33-year-old Colin O’Brady is readying for a task that no human has successfully accomplished. He’s about to travel 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) across Antarctica alone, without any resupply support. Everyone who has ever attempted that solo journey has either given up or died. “This is something that no

You might be pretty distracted by the news of the world this week. You might not want to read any news at all, although we always think that science is a safe exception. Either way, since you’re here already, we’ve prepared an easy and shareable wrap of last week’s discoveries in science. If you’d like

Explaining consciousness is one of the hardest problems in science and philosophy. Recent neuroscientific discoveries suggest that a solution could be within reach – but grasping it will mean rethinking some familiar ideas. Consciousness, I argue in a new paper, may be caused by the way the brain generates loops of energetic feedback, similar to

When your old Aunt Petunia passes away, there’s a good chance her body will either be reduced to ash inside a purpose-built kiln or buried in an expensive (but not too expensive) wooden box next to the decaying remains of Uncle Harold. If only she’d lived in another time, or another place, things could have

The pyramids of Egypt are an architectural marvel. Yet, made up as they are of blocks that averaged 2.3 metric tonnes (in the case of the great pyramid), exactly how the ancient Egyptians constructed them thousands of years ago remains somewhat of a mystery. A new archaeological discovery may, however, shed some light on how at

Neanderthals are often depicted as barrel-chested, hunched-over cavemen, but a close inspection of their fossils is telling a different story. For the first time, an international team of researchers has reconstructed the ribcage and upper spine of a Neanderthal man who died roughly 60,000 years ago. The findings suggest that contrary to popular images, these

You might not realize it, but every time you stand up, your body is working behind the scenes to stop you from fainting. Due to the sudden drop in blood pressure, special neurons called baroreceptors swing into action to compensate – and scientists just figured out more about how they operate. Considering the details of

Millions of people around the world are affected by arachnophobia – the unreasonable fear of spiders, which evidence suggests could be an innate human response embedded by evolution inside the brain. But while the fear may be a relic of an ancient survival mechanism, the anxiety it provokes is something most arachnophobes today would rather

At its peak, the ancient city of Teotihuacán in what we now know as Mexico boasted an estimated 125,000 inhabitants, making it one of the busiest hubs of the old world. Nobody knows for sure where that thriving populace disappeared to, but the discovery of a secret tunnel and chamber buried beneath the city’s Pyramid

Disney has something of a cult following, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that some people want to stay in the entertainment giant’s theme parks… forever. As a report in the Wall Street Journal has just confirmed, some people really try to do that – by having loved ones scatter their cremains. At

The Best Illusions of the Year competition is nothing to sneeze at – every year a group of experts (along with internet users) vote for the most interesting and mind-melting illusions, submitted from all over the world. And this year is no exception; we have everything from trippy snakes to a three-way ambiguous object. Let’s

Chocolate is not a new thing. The delicious, addictive treat we know today has long been traced to the ancient peoples of Central America, as far back as 4,000 years ago. But new research indicates chocolate’s origin story is actually far, far older than this – and suggests it was domesticated somewhere else entirely, south

Deep in the enormous citadel of an ancient Peruvian culture, archaeologists have uncovered a corridor containing 19 mysterious black wooden statues. Some are wearing masks of clay, tucked into special alcoves that line the walls. The eerie line-up was discovered in the ruins of the great Chimú culture capital city of Chan Chan, which is

As beautiful and unspoilt as the Antarctic wilderness is, it can also be very lonely (unless you’re a penguin). After news of a researcher at the Bellingshausen Station on King George Island allegedly stabbing and injuring a colleague, we wonder if cabin fever got the better of the team working there.  The injured man was flown

For as long as Buttermilk Creek has wound its way through Texas Hill Country, its spring-fed waters have carved through the region’s dark, dense clays, cutting away layers of earth to expose the rock – and the history – below. Here, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a human settlement stretching back as far as 15,500

Ending a romantic relationship is never easy, and there’s something about a bad relationship that makes it especially hard to break off. Researchers are still not entirely sure what that “something” is, but a new study suggests it may be a curious sign of altruism. You might assume people who stay in an unhappy relationship are

One of the most precious archaeology finds in human history has survived the devastating fire that tore through the National Museum of Brazil in early September. The skull of Luzia is believed to be one of the oldest human remains ever recovered in the Americas. It is also one of the museum’s most prized possessions; that’s

Some people like to jump out of aeroplanes. Others like to surf down the side of an active volcano on a wooden board. And some people, apparently, seem happy to replicate the most cursed sea journey in our recent collective memory: the voyage of the Titanic. When it embarked on its maiden voyage from Southampton,

Four years after a mummified torso decorated with unique tattoos was uncovered in a Luxor tomb, Egyptian authorities have officially confirmed the remains once belonged to a highly respected religious figure who died in her late twenties or early thirties. The unusual remains represent an early example of complex religious tattoos in ancient Egypt, adding

A team of archaeologists has discovered what’s thought to be the oldest intact shipwreck ever found, some 2,000 metres (1.2 miles) under the waters of the Black Sea. The amazingly preserved wreck is estimated to be around 2,400 years old. Some 23 metres (75 feet) long, the sunken ship looks to be ancient Greek in