Ask whether snakes have legs and the obvious answer seems to be no. A cobra, viper or grass snake has no arms, no feet and no visible limbs at all. Yet the evolutionary answer is more interesting: snakes descend from four-limbed reptilian a...
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The little hat-and-glasses icon has become shorthand for secrecy. Open an Incognito window in Chrome — or a Private Browsing window in another browser — and it feels as though you have stepp...
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Suppose you buy a brand-new one-terabyte SSD and place it on an impossibly precise scale. Then you fill every available byte with photographs, films, documents and music. Has the drive becom...
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High on a mountain in late spring, a patch of snow can suddenly look as though someone spilled watermelon juice across it. The surface turns pale pink, rose red or even crimson, sometimes st...
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For decades, coffee has occupied an awkward place in conversations about heart health. It contains caffeine, a stimulant that can temporarily raise blood pressure and make some people feel t...
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Step out of a dark cinema into brilliant afternoon sunlight and, for some people, the reaction is immediate. The eyes narrow, the nose begins to tingle and within seconds comes an involuntar...
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Look closely at the tip of your finger and you are looking at a landscape that began forming months before you were born. Ridges curve, split, stop and rejoin in patterns so detailed that th...
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Near the heart of the Milky Way lies a cloud with a reputation that sounds invented for a science-fiction cocktail menu. Sagittarius B2 contains alcohol. It also contains ethyl formate, an o...
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Imagine walking through a village where nearly every street has a pair of twins. In Qingyan Village, China, this is a reality. With 39 sets of twins among just 367 households, this small com...
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In southern Brazil lies a small town where twins are born at an extraordinary rate. Cândido Godói, often dubbed the "Land of Twins," has baffled scientists and intrigued visitors with its hi...
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