Alasdair Wilkins

The Soviet Union got closer to reaching the Moon than we ever suspected

The United States won the Space Race decisively when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, but nobody ever really knew just how close the Soviet Union got to putting cosmonauts on the lunar surface. Now, forty years later, researcher Charles Vick says the Soviets really could have reached the Moon by…

Our brains are shrinking…and why this actually means we’re getting smarter

Over the last 30,000 years, the human brain has decreased about 10% in size. This might seem like proof that we’re not as smart as our ancient ancestors, but the truth is a little more complicated than that. Our brains aren’t just getting smaller – they’re also getting more efficient. The research is simple enough.…

Apollo 14 visited the Moon forty years ago today

Forty years ago today, Apollo 14 completed the third successful lunar landing in human history. As the lunar module Antares took off, astronaut Edgar Mitchell snapped a bunch of photographs that have now created this amazing image of their landing site. But this is just a part of the entire mosaic, which reveals their landing…

The Superman reboot may feature a surprising female lead. Plus new insights into the Battlestar Galactica prequel!

Wake up with spoilers! Whoever the female main character is in the new Superman movie… it’s not who you think. The visual effects designer for The Dark Knight Rises promises the movie will use as many practical effects as possible — and that includes a real Anne Hathaway in a real Catwoman outfit. Brooklyn Decker…

Huge cricket-like insect hasn’t evolved in over 100 million years

The splay-footed cricket is one of the biggest, most scary-looking insects, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. A fossil recently uncovered in Brazil reveals these crickets have looked more or less exactly the same since the time of the dinosaurs. Clearly, these insects don’t adapt – they make the world adapt…

The tiny island of Sark is a window back to the Middle Ages – and that’s good for science

Sark is a tiny, car-free island in the English Channel that didn’t fully get rid of feudalism until 2008. Its nights are so reliably dark that it’s just been named the world’s first “dark sky island”, making the island one giant observatory for looking up at the night sky without any light pollution to get…

Kepler Telescope discovers 1200 new worlds…and at least five potentially Earth-like planets

In fifteen years, astronomers have detected just over 500 planets orbiting other stars. Now, after less than two years in orbit, the Kepler telescope has more than tripled that figure, discovering more than 1,200 possible new worlds. Even better, at least 54 of them are in their star’s habitable zone, and five of these are…

Kristen Stewart won’t be playing Lois Lane. Plus how Bucky Barnes and Howard Stark fit into Captain America!

The Dark Knight Rises is going to be shot in as much IMAX as humanly possible. Twilight’s Kristen Stewart is out of the running for Lois Lane — assuming she was ever in contention to begin with. Learn what Bucky Barnes and Howard Stark bring to Captain America. Hugh Jackman is getting ridiculously bulked up…

Make It So Sexy: Exclusive First Look at the New Star Trek: The Next Generation Porn Movie

Star Trek: The Next Generation: A XXX Parody is the latest porn movie to bring together science fiction and porn. It’s also a loving tribute and unofficial sequel to a classic TNG episode starring some major Trekkie porn stars, not to mention an uncannily convincing Jean-Luc Picard impersonator. We just had to know what was…

Why we have to get rid of pi for the sake of good math

Pi is perhaps the most beloved number in the world. People devote an entire day to celebrating it; enthusiasts memorize it to hundreds of thousands of places; and it’s even pretty useful for calculating the properties of circles and spheres. But pi hides some very important mathematical truths. Put another way, pi is just wrong.…

16,500 year old cemetery reveals the pets we kept before dogs

A burial site recently uncovered in Jordan is the oldest ever discovered in the Middle East, at least 1,500 years older than any other cemetery previously discovered. But it’s not just its great age that makes it special – the cemetery also reveals what animals humans kept as pets long before the domestication of dogs.…

Six strange, tightly packed exoplanets baffle astronomers

The six planets you see above are all considerably larger than Earth, and yet five of them orbit their star at a closer distance than Mercury. It’s the most ridiculously packed solar system we’ve ever seen, and our current theories about how planets form are completely unable to explain how they all got there. It’s…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt might be joining Batman 3 after all! Plus who will be Lois Lane in the Superman reboot?

Tom Hardy might not be the only Inception star who is joining The Dark Knight Rises, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in talks for a role. We’ve got confirmation that Anne Hathaway won’t just be playing Selina Kyle. Now that Henry Cavill is Superman, the search is on for Lois Lane – and some familiar names…

Doctor Who Set Videos

How an agnostic, libertarian hypochondriac invented “survival of the fittest”

The most famous philosopher of the Victorian age, Herbert Spencer, coined the term “survival of the fittest”, tried to apply the concepts of evolution to human society, and was described by Charles Darwin himself as “twenty times my superior.” He was also a shameless hypochondriac, a sadistic prankster, and liked to dress in a one-piece…

Parrots hold the evolutionary secret of why we’re left-handed or right-handed

Almost everybody has a dominant hand that they use, but it’s actually a mystery why that is. After all, we can see both of our hands just as well, and there’s no built-in reason why one should work better than the other. But some grabby parrots might hold the deep evolutionary reason behind handedness. Researchers…

The universe is at least 250 times bigger than it looks

The universe is so unimaginably large that parts of it are literally impossible to see, because their light is too distant to reach us even after 14 billion years. Now we might know just how big the cosmos really is. Turns out everything we can see is less than half a percent of the entire…

Breathtaking look at a solar eclipse in space

Back on January 4, the Moon moved in front of the Sun, almost completely blocking our view of the Sun back on Earth. The Japanese-American Hinode satellite snapped this absolutely incredible photo of the eclipse from up in space. This particular type of eclipse is known as an annular solar eclipse, which occurs when the…

Christopher Nolan explains why he’s making Batman 3. Plus why Captain America is a modern Raiders of the Lost Ark!

In today’s spoiler roundup, Christopher Nolan discusses why he decided to go ahead with The Dark Knight Rises. Plus hints about Captain America and John Carter of Mars, James Bond casting news, and exciting Doctor Who details. Spoilers ahead! The Dark Knight Rises Director Christopher Nolan says he ultimately decided to make this movie because…

Nigerian schizophrenics prove the truth of astrology…or not

You can’t judge books by their covers, but you can judge scientific papers by their titles. Consider: “The planetary positions and relationships at the dates of birth of a cohort of Nigerian schizophrenics.” Yeah, this is going to get weird. The always great NCBI ROFL offers this wonderfully strange paper from the University College Hospital…