Did you ever ride the Gravitron? You're pinned to the wall by forces three times that of normal gravity. It’s fun, unsettling can even make you puke. But what happens if your body experiences extreme changes in gravity for long periods, as is the case for an astronaut?
Is there a smell that has the power to transport you back in time? For me just one whiff of an old-style canvas tent and I’m back camping with my family as a young kid. There are other evocative odours too. The smell of bread dough rising in the sun and a bonfire with damp plane tree leaves…
Late last week, my husband and I briefly ‘became’ billionaires in our quest to conserve some of Australia’s threatened mammals. Well ok, we never really had the cash, but let’s dream for a moment. What could Australians do if we actually had that kind of money to spend on wildlife conservation?
Remember when Keanu Reeves experienced déjà vu and was told it indicated a glitch in the matrix? Not restricted to Hollywood sci-fi, in fact almost all of us have had the disconcerting feeling that what is happening now has happened before (even though it hasn’t). There are heaps of scientific theories, but no consensus as to why we have these experiences.
Did your parents tell you to turn off the TV and play outside? Perhaps they threatened that you were going to end up needing glasses if you didn’t stop playing computer games. It turns out your folks may have been right after all, although not quite for the reason they thought.
Have you got a big birthday coming up, one that ends in a zero? And have you made any major life decisions recently? Although we measure time using a continuous scale, research has shown that in the year before a milestone birthday, people are more likely to reflect on their lives and make significant changes.
What were you doing at 3:19am Tuesday 27 January? That’s when a huge asteroid passed within 1.2 million kilometres of our planet. Fortunately that’s about three times the distance to the moon so we weren’t in any danger. But how often do rocks from space actually collide with Earth? And what happens when they do?
Most animals do it. You’ve been doing it since before you were even born. And it’s quite likely looking at these photos has made you do it now. Yawning. But why do we yawn and why is yawning so contagious?
You’re probably aware that going to the supermarket when you’re hungry is a bad idea. Research published back in 1969 showed that people tend to buy more food if they hadn’t eaten recently and were hungry. But that’s not the only way hunger affects the choices we make.
I’m sure you’ve heard how unreliable your memory is. Our memories change over time and are subject to a variety of influences and biases. But what if you could have some control over your memories? What if you could make it more likely that you’d remember certain events, even unpleasant or painful ones, in a positive light? You can!
Dr Jen Martin 