Brain & Behavior
5 research-backed ways to build a habit that actually lasts
The 21-day myth won't save you—but these science-tested strategies might actually rewire your brain.
Jul 23, 2026
Writer at Science Blog
Mal James
Contributor
Mal James covers self-development, productivity, relationships, and the psychology of work. He is an entrepreneur and former teacher, and brings both perspectives into his writing. Mal's pieces focus on the practical — how people change behavior, build better habits, and navigate the parts of life that don't come with instructions.
Marine Sciences
15 things you probably didn’t know about the deep ocean
We've explored less of Earth's ocean floor than we have the surface of Mars, and what lurks in the darkness keeps defying our expectations.
Jul 23, 2026
Society
In 1932 Australia sent a small artillery detachment with machine guns to cull thousands of emus damaging Western Australia’s wheat fields, but the birds scattered, outran an attempted truck pursuit, and survived a campaign later remembered as a victory for the emus
When the Australian Army went to war against emus armed with machine guns, the birds won.
Jul 23, 2026
Society
Say pyramids and everyone pictures Egypt, but the country with the most of them lies to its south: Sudan holds well over two hundred pyramids, roughly twice Egypt’s tally, though they are smaller, steeper and far less visited
A forgotten empire built twice as many pyramids as Egypt, yet most travelers never see a single one.
Jul 22, 2026
Space
No wind stirs the Moon and no rain falls there, and that stillness has a strange consequence: the bootprints Apollo astronauts pressed into the grey dust over fifty years ago will likely stay crisp and sharp for millions of years to come
The Moon's airless vacuum is turning Apollo's dusty footprints into an accidental time capsule, preserving humanity's first steps in a way Earth's erosion never could.
Jul 22, 2026
Science
You are measurably taller when you wake than when you go to bed, and lose it again by nightfall: the soft discs between your vertebrae compress under load across the day, often costing you around a centimetre or more by evening
Your spine is slowly squeezing itself flat every waking hour, returning the lost millimeters only once you lie down.
Jul 22, 2026
Brain & Behavior
There may be a hard ceiling on friendship, set not by our schedules but by the human brain itself: one influential theory holds we can sustain only about 150 stable relationships at once, though researchers still argue over the figure
The paradox of modern connection: we have more people at our fingertips than ever, yet our brains may be wired to truly know only a few dozen.
Jul 22, 2026
Animals
The oldest known land animal alive today hatched before the telephone was invented: Jonathan, a giant tortoise on St Helena, was born around 1832 and is reckoned to be at least 194, still grazing and mating on the same lawn today
A creature that has outlived empires, technologies, and countless human generations still munches grass on a remote island, indifferent to the centuries that have transformed the world around him.
Jul 22, 2026
Animals
Most people think a goldfish forgets everything within seconds, which helps make the little bowl seem humane — but that is a myth: goldfish can remember for months, push levers and tell colours apart
The three-second memory myth lets us ignore what goldfish actually experience: boredom, frustration, and the slow wear of confinement.
Jul 22, 2026
Energy
To guard its nuclear waste for 100,000 years, Finland is trusting copper, clay and ancient stone: the canisters will sit about 430 metres down in 1.9-billion-year-old bedrock — though one prominent critic argues the copper could crack within decades to centuries.
A Finnish repository betting on geology and engineering to contain nuclear waste longer than human civilization has existed—but skeptics warn the copper canisters may fail far sooner than planned.
Jul 22, 2026
Life
It walked on two legs, wore a beak, and looked just like a small dinosaur — yet the creature dug from New Mexico rock lived 100 million years too early to be one, and was really a cousin of the crocodiles
A crocodile relative mastered the dinosaur blueprint millions of years before dinosaurs existed, suggesting convergent evolution worked faster than we thought.
Jul 22, 2026
Science in Society
The ‘tallest’ mountain on Earth is named after a man who asked for it not to be — George Everest, a British surveyor whose own surname was not even pronounced ‘Ever-est’ at all, but ‘Eve-rest’.
Everest, to his credit, did not want the honor. He told the Royal Geographical Society that his name could not be written in Hindi and could not be pronounced by the people of India.
Jul 21, 2026
Brain & Behavior
A reminder from Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius to live in the present: “No one loses any other life than this which he is living, nor lives any other than this which he is losing.”
Aurelius builds the argument to a point. Since the present is all anyone can lose: this instant, and nothing more.
Jul 20, 2026
Marine Sciences
Sunlight reaches only the top 200 metres of the sea before the water swallows it, which means the overwhelming majority of the living space on our planet exists in permanent, near-total darkness, cold and unvisited by the sun
Yet beneath a wafer-thin layer of illumination lies a vast realm of creatures that have never known sunlight—and we barely understand what lives there.
Jul 18, 2026