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Phone Home: Looking Back on 40 Years of E.T. And What It’s Taught Us About Loneliness
40 years ago this month saw the release of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – a film about a stranded alien, the boy called Elliott who discovers it and a bond of friendship that remains as magical and heartbreaking as it did back in 1982. We think of Spielberg movies today as thrilling roller-coaster rides,…
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New Zealand Scientists Are Turning Stinky Seaweed into Green Power and Fertiliser
Rotting seaweed has plagued the Caribbean for more than 10 years – but our research shows how we could clean up beaches and emissions at the same time, by turning what’s now rubbish into renewable electricity and fertiliser. Pelagic sargassum is a brown seaweed that floats at the surface of oceans, particularly in the Atlantic.…
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Did Pompeii’s ‘Masturbating Man’ Really Jerk off While Lava Flooded the City?
If you were suddenly frozen in time, there are a few things (I’d imagine) you would rather not be caught doing. This is the unfortunate fate many believe to have befallen the “masturbating man” of Pompeii. In 79 BCE, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was buried in the volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius, a…
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Fall in Love with These 5 Tiny Robots
Allow me to take you on a trip down my memory lane. As a young lad, a film I saw captured my imagination: Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 release about people shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the body of an injured scientist to repair his brain. The idea struck a chord with me. I…