
Somewhere between cardiac arrest and resuscitation, people see their own bodies from the ceiling, travel through tunnels of light, and meet the dead. Neurologists have mapped the brain in those exact moments — and what they found is stranger than any supernatural explanation. The science of near-death experiences is only just beginning. Read more

Most people assume everyone sees the same world. But a small number of women — tetrachromats — perceive up to 99 million colours the rest of us can’t see, detect, or even imagine. The science behind this extraordinary quirk of genetics is stranger, and more philosophically unsettling, than it first appears. Read more

There is a place in the universe 330 million light-years wide where almost nothing exists. No stars, no galaxies, no dark matter — just space. It is called the Boötes cosmic void, and its existence, according to our best models of how the universe works, should be essentially impossible. Here is what it means that… Read more

In 1348, a man sat in a city full of corpses and wrote down what he saw. What Giovanni Boccaccio recorded — worker revolts, institutional collapse, scapegoating, the flight of the wealthy — was not prophecy. It was pattern. And those patterns have repeated, with terrifying accuracy, every century since. Including ours. Read more

You close your eyes and assume nothing much is happening. You are spectacularly wrong. While you sleep, your brain paralyses your body, washes away toxic proteins, deletes memories, and runs a full simulation of reality. Here are 10 things your brain does in the dark — and none of them will let you sleep quite… Read more

Sixty-three light-years from Earth sits a planet that looks exactly like home — deep cobalt blue, almost peaceful. But its atmosphere burns at 1,000 degrees, its winds move at seven times the speed of sound, and every single day it rains molten glass. Sideways. This is the glass rain planet — and it will change… Read more

It doesn’t kill its host. It takes control. Zombie fungus mind control is one of the most extraordinary and disturbing phenomena in all of biology — and the more scientists study it, the more unsettling the picture becomes. Read more

What happens when a brain that has never seen anything falls asleep? Understanding how blind people dream unlocks one of the deepest mysteries of human consciousness — and changes everything you thought you knew about reality. Read more