Forgetfulness doesn't have to be an inevitable part of life

You don't need medication to improve cholesterol levels. A few simple dietary tweaks can make a serious difference

Just like wild wolves, our pampered pups can enjoy playing in and with the foulest-smelling stuff

From vomit guns to nuclear chickens, these are some truly bizarre ideas that never quite took off

Most of the Universe seems to be missing – or at least, we don’t know what 95 per cent of it is. And at this point, my biggest question is, does it matter? Most of the missing stuff (68 per cent) is something called 'dark energy'. It was 'discovered’ in 1998 when astronomers observed that distant supernovae (exploding stars) were dimmer than expected. We knew the Universe was expanding, and so the supernovae should become fainter over time, but we thought that expansion was slowing down. After all, the Universe is full of matter and that matter produces gravity, which should be pulling everything together. Instead, it seemed the expansion was accelerating. So, the physics world decided on a new kind of universal constant, dark energy. It’s a similar story for dark matter (the other 27 per cent). It was something used to fix the difference between what our model was predicting and what we were seeing in the Universe. The trouble is, we’re still nowhere near understanding exactly what either of them are. So, back to my question. Does it matter? Well, we also don’t really know what gravity is, fundamentally, but we know a lot about how it behaves. And that’s the important part – we can model what it does extremely well. This lets us probe planets, stars and phenomena light-years away from us and so it seems to matter less, even as the mystery boils on. But if you would really like to know what’s going on, one set of cosmologists has a wild new theory to help us understand what dark energy could be. Find out what that theory is, in this issue.

Many pants were found to be falling to pieces – but that’s not a bad thing

A growing body of research suggests the view from the top of your head might provide a glimpse into future concerns

From interstellar visitors to alien radio signals, scientists are asking a question once confined to science fiction: what happens when we finally make contact?

Ever get the feeling your dog knows what you’re thinking? It might be because they’re picking up on cues you didn’t realise you were transmitting.