SCIENCE WORLD

Join in with super competitions, fun festivals, brilliant museums and great games this month.

HEADSCRATCHERS

Seeking answers to your science questions? Ask our resident expert

What is hydroelectric energy and how does it work?

Find out how electricity is generated from flowing water.

GET STUFFED!

Dare you discover the fascinating - and sometimes foul - truth about fast food? Ciaran Sneddon serves up a feast of facts.

Alom Shaha

Meet the teacher on a mission to make physics easy to understand.

The Beast of Exmoor

Investigate the case of the mysterious big cat roaming the English countryside.

RAIDERS OF THE BACK YARD

The fictional adventures of Indiana Jones are legendary. Expert archaeologist Mary-Ann Ochota goes in search of the real-life treasure-hunters.

Should people learn to love wasps?

Some people think that these pesky insects deserve to be treated more kindly.

MEDICINE : SCIENTISTS PRODUCE THE FIRST CELLULAR MAP OF THE HUMAN INTESTINE

Fluorescent antibodies reveal the atlas of cell that cooperate to protect you 'neighbourhoods'

ASTRONOMY : RARE 'ULTRACOOL' BROWN DWARF STAR FOUND EMITTING RADIO WAVES

Unusual radio signals have led astronomers to a surprising astronomical object

PRIMER : DEEP-SEA MINING

Why the next gold rush is happening at the bottom of the ocean

LIVE FACIAL RECOGNITION: THE MET POLICE'S CONTROVERSIAL NEW TECH

It has already been used at high-profile events, despite concerns about the privacy, accuracy and bias of this Al-driven system

SAY AHHH

EVERY LIVING THING HAS TO EAT SOMEHOW... WHATEVER TYPE OF MOUTH IT MIGHT HAVE. AND THERE ARE SOME TRULY BIZARRE MOUTHS IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. SOME OF THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY EXAMPLES ARE ENOUGH TO LEAVE YOU SLACK-JAWED

DEAR DOCTOR : WHY DO I CATASTROPHISE SO MUCH AND HOW DO I STOP?

Catastrophe-filled thoughts are common, especially for people prone to anxiety. You might find yourself imagining that your first day at a new job will be an excruciating disaster, that you'll flunk an upcoming exam, or that your flight to New York will crash. These thoughts are unpleasant, but they're essentially your mind working overtime to keep you safe. If you start to act on these catastrophic thoughts, trying to avoid any risk in your life, that's when this thinking style can start to become debilitating.

IS IT TRUE THAT WEARING HEADPHONES INCREASES EAR BACTERIA?

Your ears are already dark, moist and full of oils and dead skin - an all-you-can-eat buffet for many bacteria. Sealing off the entrance with headphones or earphones seems like it could only make that environment more inviting to these microbes.

OBJECTS IN OPPOSITION WHEN: LATE AUGUST - EARLY SEPTEMBER 2023

Opposition describes an object being opposite the Sun in the sky. For some planets this can be a big deal, as the weeks around opposition offer us the best views of them. At opposition a planet is also visible all night long.

A SCIENTIST'S GUIDE TO...PILLOWS

THE RIGHT SUPPORT CAN HELP RELIEVE BACK PAIN

WHAT IS BLUE LAVA?

Most people - if they've heard of it at all - are aware of 'blue lava' thanks to the otherworldly photographs of French photographer Olivier Grunewald. The images, which Grunewald captured at the Kawah Ijen volcano on the island of Java in Indonesia, seem to show rivers of electric-blue lava, incandescent against a black velvet night.

VIROLOGY : NEW AI COULD IDENTIFY VIRAL 'DARK MATTER' OF NEXT PANDEMIC

The early warning system is based on machine learning and could have predicted the emergence of the COVID variants

Show your stripes

Pictures may tell a thousand words, but this one goes even further. These stripes appeared along Dover's White Cliffs on 21 June, as the iconic landmark was gradually turned into a scientific graphic.

Let's work together

There's a reason they call the ocean Earth's unexplored frontier. Dive into any of this planet's waters and you soon discover an entirely different ecosystem, populated with strange and unexpected species.

PALEO IS A FLINTSTONE FANTASY

'Big farmer' has changed our digestive capabilities... and that's just one of the reasons why you can't eat like a caveman

WHAT SHOULD I DO IF I GET STRANDED ON SNAKE ISLAND?

Just off the coast of southern Brazil lies the island of Queimada Grande, known as 'Snake Island'. Covering just 43 hectares (106 acres), this rocky island is home to between 2,000 and 4,000 highly venomous golden lancehead vipers (Bothrops insularis), which can grow to 70cm (just over 2ft). The snakes were trapped there around 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, when rising sea levels cut them off from the mainland.

Birthday wishes

This is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. It's the closest star-forming region to Earth - around 390 light-years away - and in stellar nursery terms, it's a rather small, quiet region.

A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN

Earth is blanketed by a swarm of human-made debris hurtling around at speeds of up to 8km per second - about five times the speed of a bullet. The UK's Earth & Space Sustainability Initiative hopes to catch these fast-moving projectiles and clean up the nasty, and potentially lethal, mess our cosmic littering habit has caused

THE POWER OF HABIT

Our lives are filled with habitual behaviours, both good and bad, but how do they form and how can we build better ones?

Should you underestimate the power of the Force?

It's an energy that lets you control people's minds and.... make things float. So where do midi-chlorians fit in?

SKIN CANCER: CASES ARE RISING. WHAT CAN WE DO?

Annual cases are expected to reach 2.7 million by 2040

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BANG SINGULARITY?

The Big Bang marks the beginning of the Universe, right? The physicists brave enough to look beyond it aren't so sure

DON'T KICK THE ROBOT

If something's got no feelings, you can't hurt it, right? So where's the harm?