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THE deep sea is full of fantastical creatures. Gelatinous pink sea pigs shovel food with arms like tiny sea anemones. Delicate tripod fish stand on chopstick-like stilts. Barreleye fish have transparent heads that reveal all their internal workings. Giant larvaceans hold a well-deserved spot on this list of curiosities. Shaped like oversized sperm, with a […]

print-edition iconPrint edition | Science and technology Sep 20th 2018 YUSAKU MAEZAWA is a Japanese fashion billionaire. If he gets his way, in 2023 he will become the first person to visit the Moon since Eugene Cernan, an American astronaut, left in 1972. Unlike Mr Cernan, Mr Maezawa will not land. Instead, he will zoom […]

print-edition iconPrint edition | Science and technology Sep 20th 2018 CELLS divide many times throughout their lives. But they cannot do it indefinitely. Once they have reached the limits of their reproductive powers, they enter a state called “senescence”, in which they carry on performing their duties but stop making new copies of themselves. For […]

AS MISMATCHES go, it’s a big one. When physicists bring the Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity together they get a clear prediction. In the very early universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have come into being. Since the one famously annihilates the other, the result should be […]

ONE tale of Nasreddin, a self-satirising 13th-century philosopher, tells of the time he lost a precious ring. When his wife asks why he is searching in the yard rather than inside, where the ring was lost, Nasreddin explains that the light is better outside. Looking for something where the search is easiest is a form […]