Eliud Kipchoge just ran a marathon in less than two hours—how much faster does science say humans can get?
On Saturday morning, Eliud Kipchoge accomplished a feat that athletes and scientists alike had long speculated might be impossible.
Tag: physiology
American and British scientists split the Nobel Prize for work on how cells handle hypoxia
A trio of scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday. William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza accepted the award, which marks the kickoff of the Nobel Prize season, for their work on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
Women soccer players usually peak in their 20s—here’s why some excel into their 40s
If Brazil’s Formiga sees the field in the 2019 Women’s World Cup, she’ll be the oldest athlete to appear in the tournament, taking the record from the United States’ Christie Pearce, who played in 2015 at 39 years and 11 months old. Here’s how some women are able to stay in their prime for so long.
What running ultramarathons and giving birth tell us about the limits of human endurance
Runners on the 3,080 mile Race Across the USA in 2015. A group of researchers studied people who ran across the United States over a five-month period to understand the limits of human endurance.
Space changes your brain in bigger ways than we thought
A new study published in JAMA Neurology this week provides more concerning details on how spaceflight changes the brain. The findings inadvertently underscore just how little we know about the effects of space on brain health and safety, creating a worrisome specter that’s sure to grow larger as we start sending astronauts into space for years at a time.
The biomechanics behind Michael Jackson’s impossible dance moves
Before reading the rest of this article, please first stand up and try to tilt your whole body forward at a 45 degree angle. You may only bend at the ankle.
The world’s best freedivers seem to have evolved super-sized spleens
The indigenous group live among the islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. To find food, groups of the Bajau take daily plunges, often more than 230 feet down, to spear fish and other sea animals. In fact, some spend as much as 60 percent of the day diving for food. If an average human tried, they’d probably not survive. So how do the Bajau manage it?
Scientists still don’t understand how freedivers can survive such crushing depths
When you look at the stresses freediving places on our physiology, it initially looks almost impossible that anyone should be able to dive to such profound depths—and yet they do.
A six pack won’t make you a better runner, but these deep core exercises might
Runners who have weaker deep core muscles could be more likely to experience chronic back pain than runners with stronger ones.
Can you really die from a broken heart?
The severe emotional distress that accompanies a broken heart can sometimes, in rare cases, lead to life threatening physical changes.