All posts tagged: human

Earth’s magnetic field failed 41,000 years ago – forever changing human evolution

Earth’s magnetic field failed 41,000 years ago – forever changing human evolution

Published by skeptic

During a brief but dramatic chapter in Earth’s history about 41,000 years ago, the planet’s magnetic field nearly collapsed. What followed was a cascade of environmental and biological changes that may have shaped the course of human evolution. This period, called the Laschamps excursion, lasted around 2,000 years. The strength of Earth’s magnetic field dropped to just 10% of its current level, while the magnetic poles wandered far from their usual locations. For about 300 years, the magnetic field tilted and weakened rapidly, behaving more like the multipolar magnetic fields of outer planets. This sudden shift allowed high-energy particles from the Sun to pierce the atmosphere more easily, threatening life on the ground and transforming the skies. A Shield Under Stress Earth’s magnetic field has long served as a vital shield against the harshness of space. Generated by the flow of molten iron in the outer core, this field forms the magnetosphere—a vast bubble that deflects charged particles from the Sun. This protective layer allows Earth to maintain an atmosphere, prevents ozone loss, and supports …

Joint Committee on Human Rights pushes Government over legal recognition of humanist marriages

Joint Committee on Human Rights pushes Government over legal recognition of humanist marriages

Published by skeptic

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) asked the Government to know to know ‘when and how [it] proposes to address the continuing lack of legal recognition for humanist wedding ceremonies in England and Wales, bearing in mind the Administrative Court’s judgment in the Harrison case in 2020.’ In a letter to Justice Minister Lord Ponsonby, Committee Chair Lord Alton has asked the Government about a right already granted to humanist couples in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Channel Islands. The Marriage Act 2013 granted the government the power to recognise humanist marriages, yet successive administrations have failed to implement the necessary legislation. This issue has been raised repeatedly in recent months in Parliament. In response, Lord Ponsonby has previously said that the Government would be ‘carefully considering the Law Commission’s report and have a duty to take the time to consider these important issues. We will set out our position on weddings reform in the coming months’. In the final report of its review of weddings law in England and Wales in 2022, the …

After 125 Years, France Begins Repatriating Human Remains from Its Colonial Past

After 125 Years, France Begins Repatriating Human Remains from Its Colonial Past

Published by skeptic

France will repatriate the skulls of King Toera and two Sakalava warriors to Madagascar, marking the first return of human remains under a new French law passed in 2023. The remains, which were taken during France’s colonization of the island in 1897, have been held for more than a century in Paris’s Natural History Museum. The decision was announced by French prime minister François Bayrou and follows a formal request by Madagascar in 2022, as well as a review by a bilateral scientific committee. A decree published on April 2 orders the museum to return the skulls within a year. The move is being positioned as both a symbolic and legal milestone: the first application of France’s new framework for returning human remains taken during colonial campaigns, and an acknowledgment—however belated—of the brutality that accompanied the expansion of its empire. Related Articles During the French seizure of the island in August 1897, King Toera was reportedly negotiating his surrender when French forces massacred hundreds of people in the village of Ambiky. The severed heads of three …

More and more, microplastics are collecting in human brains

More and more, microplastics are collecting in human brains

Published by skeptic

average: (in science) A term for the arithmetic mean, which is the sum of a group of numbers that is then divided by the size of the group. blood-brain barrier: A barrier of tightly packed cells that carefully regulate what molecules can — and can’t — enter the brain. The barrier protects the brain from foreign substances in the blood and helps to maintain a constant environment for brain cells. cardiologist: A doctor that specializes in the branch of medicine dealing with functions and diseases of the heart. caveat: A potential exception to the general rule or to some general expectation. coauthor: One of a group (two or more people) who together had prepared a written work, such as a book, report or research paper. Not all coauthors may have contributed equally. cognition: (adj. cognitive) The mental processes of thought, remembering, learning information and interpreting those data that the senses send to the brain. database: An organized collection of related data. environment: The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or …

Cutting-edge wearable device mimics the complexity of human touch

Cutting-edge wearable device mimics the complexity of human touch

Published by skeptic

The sense of touch gives you vital information about the world around you. From gripping a coffee mug to shaking hands or feeling fabric, touch helps you interact with objects and people. Beneath your skin, a network of sensors called mechanoreceptors detects vibrations, pressure, stretch, and movement. These receptors work together to deliver a complex, layered experience that goes far beyond a simple buzz. Now, a breakthrough in haptic technology could bring that same level of complexity into the digital world. Engineers from Northwestern University have developed a tiny, wireless device that mimics the real feeling of touch in virtual environments. Unlike most current devices that just vibrate, this new technology can push, pull, twist, or slide across your skin — even combine different movements — for a realistic and customizable touch experience. A leap in touch technology The new actuator, developed by engineers at a top research university, brings something never before seen in haptic devices: full freedom of motion. That means it can move and apply force in all directions — up, down, …

The surprising evolutionary link between bowerbirds and human art

The surprising evolutionary link between bowerbirds and human art

Published by skeptic

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. From “Birds, Sex and Beauty” by Matt Ridley. Copyright © 2025 Matt Ridley. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Sexual selection may explain the start of art. As [Charles] Darwin put it in The Descent of Man: “The playing passages of bower-birds are tastefully ornamented with gaily-coloured objects; and this shews that they must receive some kind of pleasure from the sight of such things.” The satin and great bowerbirds courting females with bottle tops and chili peppers are of course driven mostly by instinct, says the conventional wisdom, while human beings have culture.  Hmm. I think both ends of that claim are partly wrong: People are driven more by instinct than we admit, and bowerbirds have more culture than we assume. Bowerbirds are unusually large-brained birds. The Cambridge zoologist John Madden surveyed the behaviors of bowerbirds and concluded that “despite a paucity of …

What makes the human brain unique? We compared it with monkeys and apes to find out

What makes the human brain unique? We compared it with monkeys and apes to find out

Published by skeptic

Scientists have long tried to understand the human brain by comparing it to other primates. Researchers are still trying to understand what makes our brain different to our closest relatives. Our recent study may have brought us one step closer by taking a new approach – comparing the way brains are internally connected. The Victorian palaeontologist Richard Owen incorrectly argued that the human brain was the only brain to contain a small area termed the Hippocampus minor. He claimed that made it unique among the animal kingdom and, he argued, the human brain was therefore clearly unrelated to other species. We’ve learnt a lot since then about the organisation and function of our brain, but there is still much to learn. Most studies comparing the human brain to that of other species focus on size. This can be the size of the brain, size of the brain relative to the body, or or the size of parts of the brain to the rest of it. However, measures of size don’t tell us anything about the …

We modelled how early human ancestors ran – and found they were surprisingly slow

We modelled how early human ancestors ran – and found they were surprisingly slow

Published by skeptic

Imagine the scene, around 3 million years ago in what is now east Africa. By the side of a river, an injured antelope keels over and draws its last breath. The carcass is soon set on by hyenas, who tussle with a crocodile. The crocodile surfaces and grabs part of the animal. The hyenas win and the crocodile retreats with only a leg. After having their fill, the hyenas slope off. Some funny-looking apes approach, walking upright. They have what appear to be stones with sharp edges in their hands. They hurriedly cut off some scraps of meat and start chewing at them. Their squabbling attracts the attention of a nearby Homotherium (an extinct, scimitar-toothed big cat) who creeps up and suddenly breaks cover. Will these strange apes survive the encounter? Can they run fast enough, and far enough? Our team’s research modelled the anatomy of these early humans, Australopithecus afarensis, to find out how well they could run. Australopithecus afarensis is one of the best-known early human ancestors dating from 2.9-3.9 million years ago. …

Weird New Computer Runs AI on Captive Human Brain Cells

Weird New Computer Runs AI on Captive Human Brain Cells

Published by José

Australian startup Cortical Labs has launched what it’s calling the “world’s first code deployable biological computer.” The shoe box-sized device, dubbed CL1, is a notable departure from a conventional computer, and uses human brain cells to run fluid neural networks. In 2022, Cortical Labs made a big splash after teaching human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game “Pong.” The CL1, however, is a fundamentally different approach, as New Atlas reports. It makes use of hundreds of thousands of tiny neurons, roughly the size of an ant brain each, which are cultivated inside a “nutrient rich solution” and spread out across a silicon chip, according to the company’s website. Through a combination of “hard silicon and soft tissue,” the company claims that owners can “deploy code directly to the real neurons” to “solve today’s most difficult challenges.” “A simple way to describe it would be like a body in a box, but it has filtration for waves, it has where the media is stored, it has pumps to keep everything …

Swear by it: Human evolution and the science of ‘bad’ language

Swear by it: Human evolution and the science of ‘bad’ language

Published by skeptic

In anticipation of the Rosalind Franklin Lecture on 6 March, we spoke with  2025 Rosalind Franklin Lecture Medallist, science writer and broadcaster Dr Emma Byrne. In celebration of International Women’s Day, Emma will present the Rosalind Franklin Lecture on the subject of ‘The Amazing Science of Bad Language’ on 6 February 2025.  Hi Emma! In your Rosalind Franklin Lecture, you’ll be exploring the evolutionary origins of bad language. Why might profanity be useful to our survival? One of the most astonishing bits of research I encountered when writing the book came from a chimpanzee adoption study. An extended family of chimpanzees spontaneously developed swearing. It showed that three things are sufficient to allow swearing to develop: a taboo, a word relating to that taboo, and an emotional state that you want to communicate. While we can never know for sure, my intuition is that swearing is a huge evolutionary advantage. It allows us to work together without physical violence – even in high-stress situations where conflict may be inevitable! Is there a difference in how …