Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Do Your Fingers Wrinkle in the Bath?
It looks like your skin has simply soaked up too much water, but the wrinkles are made on purpose by your nervous system, and they may be there to help you hold on.
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Cosmic Questions
Tiny ponderings about a very big universe.
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Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Do We Get Goosebumps?
A cold breeze, a scary film and a favourite song can all raise the same tiny bumps on your arms, which is a lot of effort for hair we barely have.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Do Onions Make You Cry?
An onion sitting on the counter is perfectly harmless, but the moment a knife goes in it starts building a tiny chemical weapon aimed straight at your eyes.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Can't You Tickle Yourself?
The same finger that makes a friend squeal does nothing at all on your own ribs, because a part of your brain reads the script before the tickle arrives.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Does Your Own Voice Sound So Strange on a Recording?
Hearing yourself played back is like meeting a stranger who has borrowed your words, and part of the reason is that you have spent your whole life listening from inside your own head.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Is the Other Side of the Pillow Always Cooler?
Flipping your pillow to the cool side is the smallest holiday there is, and the reason it works is a lovely bit of physics hiding in the fluff.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Is the Way Back Always Shorter?
The journey home takes exactly as long as the journey out, and it is over noticeably sooner, which is a strange thing for an hour to do.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Where Does a Lap Go When You Stand Up?
A cat can find one instantly, it holds a plate perfectly well, and the moment you get out of the chair it is simply not anywhere.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Do We Tidy Before the Cleaner Comes?
You are paying somebody to clean the house, and the night before, you clean the house.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
What Is the Smallest Thing You Would Still Call a Hill?
There is no official height at which a bump becomes a hill, and philosophers have a 2,000-year-old name for why that line is so hard to draw.