As big questions go, you can’t get much bigger than “What is the meaning of life?” It is a question that is often modified ...

Think of a mystery musical instrument. If a physicist is told the loudness of the sound it makes at every possible frequency, in principle they can use this information to figure out the shape of the ...

Most scientific breakthroughs take years of research – but often, serendipity provides the final push, as these historic discoveries show .

James Bridle's "Ways of Being" and Ray Nayler's "The Mountain in the Sea" aim to explode our tired ideas about intelligent life.

God: An Anatomy (Pan Macmillan) by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. We don’t know his real name. In early inscriptions it appears as Yhw, Yhwh, or simply Yh; but we don’t know how it was spoken. He has come ...

For many generations in societies shaped by Christianity, monogamy has been the almost undisputed champion of relationship norms. In Britain and the US, it has been held up as the dominant – really ...

The popular association of atheism with immorality is a particular deterrent for women who have religious doubts, since in Arab society they are expected to be “virtuous” in order to marry. “It is ...

The view that more information produces better decisions is at odds with the world around us.

Jacob Bloomfield's new book, "Drag: A British History", is an excellent introduction to the complexities of drag as “a queer art form” ...

The assumption that homophobic attackers are themselves secretly gay lets straight society off the hook.

Cecilia Payne realised that the Sun and stars are primarily hydrogen and helium - only for a man to take credit for the discovery Cecilia Payne, Harvard's first female professor, at the College ...

Technology is enabling us to retreat from the outside world. But we should resist the urge – for ourselves and for each other Patrons outside a busy pub in the Yorkshire Dales. Credit: Alamy There ...