It might not feel like it, but the adult bladder can hold as much as half a litre (2 cups) of pee before you’ll feel the need to ‘go’. Your body knows how much is in there because your bladder wall is filled with tiny receptors that send a message to your brain when the
Around 13.7 billion years ago, our universe sprang into existence, but what was around before the Big Bang? In a new episode of Star Talk, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking sat down with host Neil deGrasse Tyson to talk about what exactly pre-dated the beginning of our universe. Hawking’s answer put simply? Nothing. But just because an
Astronomers have come up with the most precise measurement of the Universe’s expansion rate so far – and sure enough, it still appears to be accelerating. The increasing speed shouldn’t come as a shock – we’ve suspected it for a while. What this measurement does is reduce the odds that it’s a coincidence to 1
First up, let’s just be honest – 95 percent of men and 72 percent of women reading this are just here to feel good about what you’re already doing behind closed doors (hopefully). But if the rest of you have been holding out your entire lives, just waiting for science to give you a reason
Isn’t it beautiful? This is an illustrated logarithmic scale conception of the observable Universe with the Solar System at the centre. Encircling the Solar System are the inner and outer planets, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri star, Perseus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, other nearby galaxies, the cosmic web, cosmic microwave radiation, and invisible
A small Solar System object is about to pay us a second visit since its discovery in 2015. It’s called 2015 TB145, also known as the Halloween Asteroid – and for good reason. It’s just perfect. It looks a little like a human skull in certain conditions; it’s as dark as coal; its closest approach
Earth is full of bizarre landscapes. Some are land formations moulded over thousands of years, while others are human-made creations that have altered the planet in strange ways. From the bubbling lava lakes of Ethiopia, to a lake that has been nestled in the desert for 2,000 years, here are 29 landscapes that are so incredible,
With 7.5 billion people currently occupying our planet, it’s almost crazy to think how much visibility is afforded to the culture and lifestyle of just 323 million Americans. But what would the world be like if everyone lived like that? Well, we totally have data to find out. From having loads more sex to spending
Ever since Elon Musk shared his blueprints for the hyperloop – a revolutionary transport system that has the potential to shuttle humans at speeds of more than 1,200 km/h (746 mph) – the engineering community has been in overdrive, with hyperloop prototypes popping up all over the place. And now Musk has put up footage
Correlation and causation can be tricky to grasp – it’s not always clear how they fit together. Just because two things are linked doesn’t mean that one causes the other… except when sometimes it does. The basics of this rather complicated relationship are put very well in the video below, from MinutePhysics. It uses the
Scattered across the world are a number of bewildering ‘mystery spots’ that appear to defy gravity – places where cars seem to drift uphill, and cyclists struggle to push themselves downhill. Also known as gravity hills, these bizarre natural phenomena can be found in places like Confusion Hill in California and Magnetic Hill in Canada, and
We all know most maps of the world aren’t entirely accurate. For starters, Africa is way bigger than it looks, and Greenland isn’t nearly so vast. But a designer in Japan has created a map that’s so accurate it’s almost as good as a globe, and it’s probably one of the best estimations you’ll see