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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.

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.

GREAT EARED NIGHTJAR

Lock up your goats, it's the great eared nightjar; a big-mouthed, teat-wrangling, milk-gobbler of a bird that will desiccate your bleaters and leave them blind.

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.

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?

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

Ideas we like...

Our pick of the month's smartest tech

Five of the best BBQs for the summer

There are hundreds of BBQs on the market, all boasting their own impressive features. But which is the best? The BBC Science Focus team picks their faves...

Artificial intelligence discovers drugs to fight ageing

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh use machine learning algorithm to identify drugs with potential new applications in minutes

HAY FEVER: IS IT REALLY GETTING WORSE?

Hay fever sufferers say their allergies are getting worse... and climate change could be to blame

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

Annual cases are expected to reach 2.7 million by 2040

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

DON'T KICK THE ROBOT

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

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

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

PRIMER : DEEP-SEA MINING

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

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

BIOLOGY : MOTHERS ARE FORCED TO FIGHT A NUTRIENT WAR WITH THEIR UNBORN BABIES

A study on mice enabled scientists to discover that children inherit 'greedy genes' from fathers

MEDICINE : ANT HONEY USED IN INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN MEDICINE COULD INSPIRE POWERFUL NEW ANTIBIOTICS

It's a first for Western science, but Indigenous Australians have been using the honeypot ant medicinally for thousands of years

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

ASTRONOMY : EERIE 'SONG' OF TWINKLING STARS DRIVES UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR NUCLEAR CORES

Taking a musical approach helps scientists determine how much a star should shine

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.

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.

Ideas we like...

Our pick of the month's smartest tech

Could adolescent reptiles learn martial arts?

Do you need more than pizza, surf slang and bright bandanas to bring out the heroes in four juvenile turtles?

ANEMOIA: WHY AM I NOSTALGIC FOR A TIME I DIDN'T KNOW OR A PLACE I'VE NEVER BEEN?

The term nostalgia’ was coined by a Swiss doctor in the 17th century to describe the homesickness experienced by mercenaries fighting far from home from the Greek nostos’ the desire to return home and algos’, meaning pain).