BLOG

Advent calendars have evolved far beyond cardboard and chocolate. From science kits and retro electronics to coding projects, nostalgic movie collectibles and even charitable “reverse” calendars, here are some of the most unusual and brilliant ways to count down to Christmas this year...

Here's a red-letter date in the history of science: November 5th, 1955. Yes! Of course! November 5th, 1955! That was the day I invented time travel. I remember it vividly. I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the sink, and when I came to I had a revelation, a vision… A picture in my head, a picture of this – this is what makes time travel possible! Doc Brown – Back to the Future (1985) It was seventy years a

One week ago, more than six million of us tuned into The Celebrity Traitors  (UK)  – and haven’t stopped talking about it since! Starring a raft of bona fide household names – a rarity for “celebrity” editions nowadays – the opening episode delivered a feast of mind games, side-eyes, and rising paranoia as 19 hopefuls descended on the Scottish Highlands to root out the traitors among them, all in the name of charity. And it didn’t take long for the accusations to fly. Within

For those of us who revel in the place where science and humour intersect, the Ig Nobel Prizes never disappoint. Now in their 35th year, these satirical awards celebrate research that “makes people laugh, then think” – the kind of unusual, imaginative, and sometimes wildly impractical discoveries unlikely to pass muster at those other awards  in Stockholm. Founded in 1991 by Marc Abrahams – then editor of the   Journal of Irreproducible Results  and later co-founder of the An

My inbox is overflowing. Every day I get bombarded with promotions, pointless updates, and notifications I never signed up for. Most of the time I swipe away without even opening. But imagine if, just once, an email landed that you actually  looked forward to reading... Alright, you caught me – this is a shameless plug for the iluli newsletter . But I promise there’s a good reason. Each month, we take on subjects that might sound intimidating at first – from bioprinting huma

Zapping brains with electricity has long been the stuff of horror stories. From Frankenstein and Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , to the often grim history of early electroshock therapy, the associations have been… less than reassuring. But today, this idea is being explored as a treatment for depression and anxiety, and even as a way to improve cognition. Neurostimulation devices, which utilise tiny electrical currents and magnetic pulses to rebalance b

Black Mirror’s  “ USS Callister ” first beamed onto screens in late 2017, wrapped in the familiar aesthetics of a Star Trek tribute – high-necked uniforms, retro sets, and a Shatner-esque captain at the helm. But beneath the camp was something far darker: a lonely, resentful tech genius – Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) – trapping digital clones of his co-workers in a sadistic simulation of his own design. A classic descent into techno-horror from the brilliant mind of Charlie Br

We’re often told to trust our instincts – but is intuition really the best guide for making big decisions?  It’s the snap judgment in an emergency that saves a life, or the lightning-fast thinking of an elite athlete making a pass no one else saw coming. In the right context, intuition can be a powerful asset. But it can also lead us astray – making us prone to bias, blind spots and oversimplification. So, when should you trust your gut, and when should you slow down and thin

A telescope powerful enough to spot a golf ball on the Moon. A camera so detailed you’d need 400 Ultra HD TVs just to view a single image in its full resolution. And the potential to uncover 20 billion galaxies. Yesterday, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its very first images. Perched on a mountaintop in Chile, the $800 million marvel is being hailed as a once-in-a-generation leap for astronomy. One of the first images (below) shows a vibrant star-forming region 9,000

More than thirty years ago, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park captivated audiences with its amber-encased DNA, lab-grown dinosaurs, and a franchise so enduring even Dr. Ian “life, uh… finds a way” Malcolm might not have predicted its staying power.   And with the aptly titled Jurassic World Rebirth  (yes, there’s another one!) roaring into cinemas this July, it’s the perfect time to ask: how close are we to turning science fiction into fact? These days, with dino DNA long gone

For a few weeks in the summer of 2023, solid-state physics was one of the hottest trending topics on the internet (yes, really !). Social media was flooded with videos of what looked like a small piece of metal levitating above a magnet. Commentators proclaimed that this magical-looking phenomenon was about to change the world in ways we could barely imagine. This floating metal was said to represent a scientific breakthrough more than a century in the making. The “holy gra

Deciding what to eat has never been more complicated – with endless diet plans, conflicting advice and science that seems to change every week.  Why has it been so difficult for nutritionists to agree on what makes for a healthy diet? And could advances in wearable technology and personalised testing finally offer a definitive answer?  Tuck into my short explainer video to find out more: Is this healthy? Imagine you’ve just woken up to breakfast – a bowl of muesli, eggs on to

NASA’s Artemis program is about to send humans back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.  Or is it? Artemis was set to make history by landing the first woman and first person of colour on the lunar surface. It aimed to lay the groundwork for a permanent Moon base, which some see as key to eventually reaching Mars. But amid political upheaval in the US, the future of Artemis now looks precarious. Might NASA be about to take a giant detour and head straight for the

Since Alexander Fleming stumbled upon penicillin nearly a century ago, antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions of lives. They’re so widely used that it’s easy to forget that they’re among the most revolutionary medical breakthroughs in history. But we now face a grave problem: they’re becoming less effective and may soon stop working altogether. This is because bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant. Does this rise of “superbugs” threaten to return us to an era of u

With February fast approaching, how’s that “New Year, New You” transformation shaping up? Every January, the multi-billion-pound diet and fitness industries cash in on our annual resolutions to get healthier. We dive into fad diets and sign up for gym memberships that are billed monthly whether we show up or not. The result? A cycle of optimism, guilt, and auto-renewals. But perhaps the age of best intentions being matched by vague solutions is coming to an end. Enter the sci

From space travel to smartphones, many of today’s groundbreaking inventions first appeared in fiction.  But beyond predicting new technologies, science fiction can tell us something much more important. It invites us to imagine not just what’s possible, but the kind of future we want to create.  Here’s my short explainer on the subject: Predicting the future I’m going to take an educated guess that your introduction to many of today’s technological marvels came from the film

“To understand life, we need to understand proteins,” said New Scientist magazine in July 2022. And yet, if we’re being honest, the topic of “protein folding” doesn’t sound all that exciting to most of us. Compare it to black holes, quantum computing or gene editing. You don’t need much prior knowledge of any of these to get a sense that they are thrilling developments at the cutting edge of science. But proteins? Well… To the uninitiated, protein equals nutrition. Important

Can you believe iluli turned five (!!) in March? I was so oblivious to the rapid passage of time that the landmark date completely passed me by – until late April, that is, when a Webby Award or two came a-knocking.   Yes, you read that right! Having been a nominee and honouree on multiple occasions, 2024 was the year we finally won, securing both the Jury and the People’s Voice awards for best video in the Health & Wellness category. The video that did the business? Magic

What’s the most destructive weather you can think of? Chances are that solar storms aren’t what you picture. But perhaps they should be. The Sun doesn’t just send heat and light our way. It also belches out a colourful variety of destructive forces, including solar winds and phenomena known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – giant coiling magnetic fields carrying a dense plasma of energetic particles tens of thousands of kilometres wide. Thanks to Earth's magnetic field, our

The global population is expected to pass 10 billion within the next few decades. That means we’ll have doubled the number of people on the planet in less than 100 years. As a result, the world faces an existential dilemma: how do we boost production to feed billions more people while reducing agriculture’s negative impact on the environment?  For thousands of years, farming has been central to human civilisation. But the looming "population bomb" means we’re going to need so