Derren Brown's Blog, page 99

Scale of the universe with Mooncake video

I have no information about who made this video. I'm sure one of you clever lot will know. The music I presume is from a band called Mooncake and it's rather good. Excellent watching if you want to feel small for a moment.

'God particle' sounds like coins in a wine glass, scientists claim

The LHC is being used to attempt to produce the particle – nicknamed the "God particle" – which scientists believe will help explain how the universe came into being. Physicists have yet to make a Higgs boson particle, but they now believe that when it is created it will sound like several coins clattering around the bowl of a wine glass.

The team working at the LHC in Switzerland hopes that if and when it is successful in creating a Higgs boson by crashing protons into each other at super...

12 Million year old Leviathan discovered in Peruvian sediment

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient whale with huge, fearsome teeth. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists have dubbed the 12 million-year-old creature "Leviathan".

It is thought to have been more than 17m long, and might have engaged in fierce battles with other giant sea creatures from the time. Leviathan was much like the modern sperm whale in terms of size and appearance.

But that is where the similarity ends. While the sperm whale is a relatively...

Science historian cracks the 2000 year old 'Plato code'

Plato was the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy's findings are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought.

Dr Kennedy, whose findings are published in the leading US journal Apeiron, reveals that Plato used a regular pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure. A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the planets and stars made an...

New Hawking book out in September

British physicist Stephen Hawking has co-authored a book that's due out in September. Bantam Dell said Monday that "The Grand Design" will be published on Sept. 7.

The publisher said it's Hawking's first major new work in nearly a decade. His previous books include "A Brief History of Time." Hawking's co-author is another physicist, Leonard Mlodinow. He teaches at California Institute of Technology, and previously wrote "The Drunkard's Walk."

In "The Grand Design," they examine evidence of "a ...

Strangers in the Mirror

"Oliver Sacks, the famous neuroscientist and author, can't recognize faces. Neither can Chuck Close, the great artist known for his enormous paintings of … that's right, faces.

Oliver and Chuck–both born with the condition known as Face Blindness–have spent their lives decoding who is saying hello to them. You can sit down with either man, talk to him for an hour, and if he sees you again just fifteen minutes later, he will have no idea who you are. (Unless you have a very squeaky voice or...

Male fish in Mexico sports sexy 'moustache'

Male molly fish in Mexico wear a moustache that makes them appear more sexy to females. Scientists were unsure why male Mexican mollies wear an extravagant moustache-like structure on their top lip.

Now a study has revealed that female fish find the moustache sexually attractive, and it is likely to be a sexually selected trait. As well as being visually-attractive, the moustache may be used to rub the female fish's genitals, exciting them.

Details are published in the journal Behavioral...

The girl who must eat every 15 minutes to stay alive

Lizzie Velasquez weighs just four stone and has almost zero per cent body fat but she is not anorexic. In fact, the 21-year-old from Austin, Texas, must eat every 15 minutes to stay healthy.

Despite consuming between 5,000 and 8,000 calories daily, the communications student, has never tipped over 4st 3lbs.

"I weigh myself regularly and if I gain even one pound I get really excited," said 5ft 2 ins Miss Velasquez, who wears size triple zero clothes. "I eat every 15-20 minutes to keep my energy ...

LHC smashes beam collision record, Earth not sucked in to black hole

Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they have moved a step closer to their aim of unlocking the mysteries of the Universe. The world's highest-energy particle accelerator has produced a record-breaking particle collision rate – about double the previous rate.

The collider is now generating around 10,000 particle collisions per second, according to physicist Andrei Golutvin. The LHC is housed in a 27km circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border.

The vast machine is...

Why We Dream: Real Reasons Revealed

The slumbering mind might not seem like an apt tool for any critical thinking, but humans can actually solve problems while asleep, researchers say. Not only that, but one purpose for dreaming itself may be to help us find solutions to puzzles that plague us during waking hours.

Dreams are highly visual and often illogical in nature, which makes them ripe for the type of "out-of-the-box" thinking that some problem-solving requires, said Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard University.

Bar...