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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

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

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

“There’s more space in your life than you think!” Next year, NASA will send humans back to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. And there’s good reason to believe that this new era of space exploration might benefit us in more ways than we realise. In a recent   video  we looked at NASA’s Artemis program. Should we be excited? Well, if you are someone who gets slightly giddy at the prospect of lunar colonies and humans making it to Mars – absolutely! But you don

“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

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

How do you feel about machines tracking your emotions? Imagine if your phone could sense that you’re feeling stressed, and it responded by recommending a meditation app. The rapid rise of emotion recognition technology means this could soon be a reality. If AI-powered tech can learn to recognise and respond to our emotions, the potential will be huge. But so are the concerns. And that’s before we get to the really big question: can this technology actually work?  Watch my sho

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

Science can sometimes feel like an abstract concept – something that happens in sealed-off labs full of people in white coats making impressive-sounding discoveries. But what if the workings of science can happen much closer than that? In your town, on your street… in your home?  This isn’t about inviting teams in hazmat suits round for tea (unless you really want to), but instead the idea that science is something that we can all get involved with. An ever-growing number o

Everyone loves a good magic trick. Take mind-reading, for instance. We can enjoy the stagecraft and illusion safe in the knowledge that it isn’t actually possible for someone to pry into our innermost thoughts. But what if it was? We may be on the verge of a technological breakthrough that takes mind-reading from illusion to reality. Brain scanning is one of the wonders of medical science. Its history goes back to 1924 and, over the years, the abstract signals and images coll

The designs of some of our greatest inventions are inspired by nature – from imitating birds to build flying machines, leaves to design solar panels, or brains to construct the neural networks behind AI. This concept of taking a leaf from nature's design book is called "biomimicry".  But we've only just scratched the surface of this vast encyclopedia of design inspiration. The natural world is the most advanced Research & Development lab in existence. It has spent billions of