The peak of Chimborazo in Ecuador sits about 2,072 metres closer to space than Everest’s summit — because Earth bulges at the equator, and Chimborazo stands almost directly on the bulge

Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, but if the question is which peak reaches furthest from the centre of the Earth, the answer sits in Ecuador — and the reason is the shape of the planet itself.

People who are truly pleasant and kind but have no close friends often spent decades being the one everyone called during a crisis — and somewhere along the way noticed almost none of those calls had reversed direction

Research suggests the feeling that time speeds up with age can be shaped by fewer temporal landmarks — the small disruptions to routine that give the brain something worth remembering

Ray-finned fishes evolved bioluminescence at least 27 chemistry and others by housing luminous bacteria, a repeated evolutionary experiment spread across deep-sea, inshore and reef lineages using different molecular machinery to make visible light

Below a few hundred metres, sunlight fails and the ocean becomes the largest dark habitat on Earth. Life responded by inventing light — again and again, in lineages that share almost nothing but the trick itself.

The Sun is actually white — the yellow we see is Earth’s atmosphere scattering the shorter blue wavelengths away before the light reaches our eyes, which is also why sunsets turn red

The Sun looks yellow from the ground and pure white from orbit, and the reason is not the star itself but the few dozen kilometres of air standing between it and the eye.