Science

The term "booby trap" has been a mystery to those unfamiliar with its etymology for many years. Though the word "booby" is considered to be a crude term for a woman's chest area, it began as a word serving as an insult for someone that was considered a fool. Thus, the full phrase "booby trap" was coined to describe a type of trap or prank that somebody would have to be a fool to fall victim to. The word "booby" originates from the Spanish term "bobo," meaning "one who is easily cheated, stupid, fool," and other synonyms describing a person...

There are few things in life that are certain but one of them is getting old. Part of life is growing older. This is an incredible gift as it allows us to mature, to try new things, to have a family, to have grandkids, and to see new life in the generations that follow us. One of the sad parts of growing older though is that it often comes with increased illness and neurological issues. There is a wide range of conditions that you are likely to encounter as you get older. Alzheimer’s is one of the most famous but...

Lucid dreaming is a powerful tool that everyone has at their disposal but few utilize it. Consider this: there are 24 hours in a day, we spend 7-9 (or we should) of them asleep. In our waking hours, there is little we can control and we often struggle to achieve what we desire. In our sleeping hours, anything can happen and if we could learn to control what happens we could unlock a whole world of potential. This is the power of lucid dreaming. To be clear, lucid dreaming is basically being in a dream and being aware that you...

When people go traveling they often have a bucket list. Some people want to make it to the other side of the world, others want to climb the highest mountain, some want to see the most temples, others want to witness the greatest natural spectacles. For many, it is about extremes and superlatives. The highest, biggest, longest, strongest, widest, tallest, whatever it is, it is about seeing the best of the best. Well, for all you intrepid travelers we have one more adventure for you to add to your list. Have you ever been to the place with the longest...

The population is an increasing cause for concern for most environmentalists. Today the planet is being put under more and more strain by the people of the world and as the population continues to increase it will only get worse. The population of 7.8 billion people is the largest the world has ever seen and it will only continue to increase. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 the population will be 9.6 billion people. Will the world be able to cope? The issue forces us to ask the question, what is the highest population the world can actually handle?...

Everyone knows that the ancient Egyptians didn’t have the internet and most know that during the renaissance there were no mobile phones. We are all well aware that modern innovations happened relatively recently. However, when looking back at history it is difficult to imagine a world without some of the items that we use and take for granted today. Take glass as an example. Most of us never even think to imagine a world without glass. Yet there was a time when glass was invented and it changed the world. Let’s take a closer look at the history of glass.The...

Sleep is incredibly important. Studies have shown that if you are not getting between 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night you are greatly impacting your health in the long term and performance in the short term. With this in mind, pulling all-nighters is a terrible idea. You should turn up to your exam at your best, fully energized and with all your knowledge safely wrapped up in your head. This is of course not always possible. The current education system sadly lends itself to short term memorizing without long term knowledge gains. This often leads to the need...

e the scene. You have just arrived in a strange city in a distant land. You are stranded. You have your phone but of course, you have no credit. If you could just take a look at a map and figure out where your hotel is or use google translate to ask for directions you would be saved. Before you really panic you check the wifi options. To your amazement that airport/bus station/juice place, you are outside of actually has wifi and it isn’t locked. You quickly connect to this beautiful Wi-Fi and open a browser. You type in your...

Holograms are something that has been around for a long time, are widely used but are barely understood by the average person. To be fair that is understandable when many technologies like holograms, the internet, tv, and more are barely understood. For example, do you actually know how photographs work? How an image in real life is captured and presented on a film? If you start to ask questions like this you will end up going down a complicated yet fascinating rabbit hole. Today we want to point you in the direction of that rabbit hole.Holograms are a mystery to...

Technological innovation is progressing at an accelerated pace. The intelligence that can be held in the palm of our hand is now so great that it is becoming intimidating. Before long machines will, without doubt, be more intelligent than humans and some argue they already are. When we hear things like this we sometimes wonder if we could stop this technological train that we are on and just say enough is enough. Yet if we did we would not have some incredible inventions that are just on the horizon. One of the most impressive of these is that we may...