Going Viral
The debate is still hot on whether viruses are alive or not. Like acrobats on a wire, these tiny entities walk the line between living and nonliving – although they are unable to metabolise,...
Going Sour: A New Explanation for the Mass Dino Death
The undying mystery of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction – the one where the dinosaurs famously perished – has gained another plot-thickening twist. A Japanese research team now claims to have shown that acid rain,...
Erdős Best Served Coded
Gigabytes of interesting, insightful data has been released for public viewing. The file contains never-before-seen information, revealing new knowledge to the world. For the first time in a long time, an introduction like this...
The McGurk Effect
Everyone loves optical illusions, but what about auditory illusions? Tricks that confuse your hearing. Perhaps the most famous example is the McGurk effect. When listening to a sound, you hear different things depending on...
Hooray for Crystallography
In celebration of the International Year of Crystallography, Debbie Nicol writes about the importance of crystallography and how the technique has helped to shape science. Recently, I read of the United Nations Educational, Scientific...
The Mystery of the Appendix… Unravelled?
The appendix, which is regarded as the body’s least useful organ, may not be so useless after all. For generations it was claimed that this small pouch protruding from the large intestine served no...
Part 2: The Crafty Design of Bitcoin
This article is part of a GIST series on Bitcoin. In part 1, we described the mathematics that underpins digital currencies like Bitcoin, as well as the security of the web itself. In this...
The Planet in Our Hands with Sir Mark Walport
The Glasgow Science Centre (GSC) is an enchanting venue, especially when wine and canapés are being served. Although they were a great starting point, the food and drink were not the main event at...
