
Most astronaut fingernail injuries happened in a swimming pool, not space
This documented occupational injury isn't caused by launch or landing—it can happen when astronauts spend hours in pressurised gloves during underwater training.
Human performance under pressure
Human Element covers the psychology of discovery. How astronauts hold up under pressure, why people believe what they believe, and what research on the human mind can and cannot tell us.

This documented occupational injury isn't caused by launch or landing—it can happen when astronauts spend hours in pressurised gloves during underwater training.
Sep 22, 2026

In orbit, astronauts face a calculus unknown to earthbound life: how many times can you wear the same underwear before it becomes a liability roughly 250 miles above the planet.
Sep 22, 2026

In September 1940, four teenagers and a dog stumbled into a hole in a hillside near Montignac, in southwestern France, and found themselves standing inside a painted Ice Age cathedral.
Sep 22, 2026

The car industry's self-fulfilling prophecy: dealers stopped offering colours, used-car markets flooded with neutral shades, and now buyers have no choice but to accept that "safe" resale value is a myth.
Sep 12, 2026

For the Torajans, death is not an ending but an extended farewell, one that can stretch across years as families prepare to usher their loved ones into the afterlife.
Sep 9, 2026

A 1970 experiment, published in 1973, staged the Good Samaritan parable in a Princeton alley and analysed what forty seminarians did. Hurry predicted helping. The sermon topic did not reach significance, which was the authors' own prediction and is still not the same as no effect.
Sep 8, 2026

Valeri Polyakov spent 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, proving that one highly selected human could remain functional for a Mars-length span while leaving major deep-space risks untested.
Sep 6, 2026

When a tiny nation gambled its military budget on schools and hospitals, it stumbled onto something richer than security.
Sep 5, 2026

When commercial hunters arrived on the Plains, they saw only hides—and erased a civilization built on using every part of an animal.
Sep 3, 2026

Mars500 wrist monitors captured less active waking and more sleep and rest across confinement, but the authors' torpor analogy did not mean hibernation and the six men adapted differently.
Aug 31, 2026

Assefa’s 2025 London time was 1:49.4 faster than Jim Peters’s 1954 men’s best, but 32.4 seconds slower than Sergey Popov’s mark from August 1958.
Aug 30, 2026

Most of our suffering exists only in our minds—and we can choose to evict it.
Aug 28, 2026

The secret to Danish happiness isn't what you'd expect—it's the art of expecting nothing at all.
Aug 27, 2026

The philosophical error hiding in how we're taught to live: treating joy as a destination rather than recognizing it's the only thing actually worth doing right now.
Aug 27, 2026

What the dying regret most has nothing to do with missed adventures and everything to do with the permission they never gave themselves.
Aug 27, 2026

Two rare male Neanderthal-lineage pelvises fall with modern women on selected mechanical measurements, leading researchers to propose that the modern male pelvis is the later, walking-specialised form.
Aug 26, 2026