Tabla de contenidos para Issue 204 en How It Works

“It even has energy weapons” We’ve got previous form with featuring military aircraft on the cover of How It Works, starting with the Eurofighter Typhoon in issue 1 and, more recently, the F-35 Lighting II in issue 130. But the sixth-generation fighter jets in this issue are totally different beasts that will dominate the airspace of any battlefield. Currently in development, the BAE Systems Tempest on this cover takes advantage of the incredible leaps in artificial intelligence in recent years, can be supported by uncrewed drones on its wing and even has energy weapons. So that science-fiction future of laser-toting aircraft with high-tech stealth capabilities could well be here when Tempest comes into service in 2035. I hope you enjoy the issue. FOR EXCLUSIVE HIW NEWS AND OFFERS, SIGN UP…

For 12 years, Pope Francis, previously known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, sat at the head of the Catholic Church. However, following a stroke, the pontiff experienced heart failure and passed away on 21 April 2025. Along with global mourning, the death of the well-respected pope triggered the start of a long-held voting process known as a conclave. Within the Catholic Church, there are high-ranking clergy members, typically made up of bishops or archbishops, who advise the pope. These members are known as cardinals. There are currently 252 cardinals from 90 different countries. Along with being advisors to the pontiff, cardinals are the electing body for the next pope. However, only 135 of those cardinals were technically eligible to vote. Reforms to the election process by Pope Paul VI in 1970…

Flavour alone doesn’t determine how highly you rate a food. The feeling of food in the mouth plays a huge part in your enjoyment of a meal. While taste receptors process the flavours in foods, nerve cells help the brain perceive the tactile feeling of the contents of your mouth. In the brain’s somatosensory cortex – part of the parietal lobe at the top of the brain – signals from your mouth’s interaction with food are incorporated into your perception of the experience. Aside from the sense of touch, which is the primary texture-detecting response, kinesthetics also play a part in sensing texture. This is the movement and position of food in the mouth, and it’s your teeth’s role to test this. As they chew on different foods, the mouth…

If you ever get the feeling that you’re insignificant as one of 8 billion humans on Earth, or when you think about the scale of the universe, consider the power of the unassuming butterfly. The idea behind the ‘butterfly effect’ theory is that the tiny currents of air changed by the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can lead to a powerful storm. This is because weather patterns are highly sensitive to their initial conditions. If a butterfly alters the air pressure or temperature slightly with this subtle movement, these tiny changes in atmospheric conditions can snowball into huge meteorological events that cause a hurricane. The butterfly effect is caused by unpredictable events between these actions, meaning that if we were able to plot each successive change, it would no longer…

A PIERCING QUESTION Dear HIW, Why is it that when you get a new piercing it can easily close up, but after time it’s less likely to? Lucy Quinlan If you take a piercing out prematurely, it may not have fully healed yet. When you get a piercing, you purposely damage the skin and tissue. The body works to close the gap in the skin, just as it does with a cut. When an earring remains in the ear, the skin heals around the piercing, leaving a gap where the metal is. The piercing needs to remain in the ear for several weeks while the skin heals and new tissue is formed. In the months that follow, collagen around the piercing matures, stabilising the tissue around the hole. While healing,…

Pulling an oil platform For those in Corpus Christi, Texas, in May 1988, the sight of this colossal structure sailing along the river might have come as a surprise. With tugboats pulling it along, this maze of crossed steel beams was en route to become what was then the world’s tallest offshore oil platform, called Bullwinkle. Once assembled in the Gulf of Mexico, the platform stood around 529 metres from the seabed. A millipede’s many legs Getting up close and personal with a millipede reveals the arrangement of this invertebrate’s many legs. It’s a common misconception that millipedes have 1,000 legs. They usually have between 40 and 400, but some species have as many as 750. As you can see in this image, each body segment has two pairs of…

It’s been decades since the rage virus escaped from a primate research laboratory in Cambridge, but now we can finally find out what the zombie-infested world has come to in the 28 Days Later sequel, coming to cinemas on 20 June 2025. Aptly named 28 Years Later, it follows a group of survivors living on a small island before they set off to the mainland to investigate the virus that’s transformed its hosts into mindless killing machines. Thankfully, there’s no such virus that exists in the real world, but Hollywood largely drew its inspiration for this movie from the properties of a pathogen that’s passed on through a bite, in particular rabies. It’s estimated that 59,000 people die from the rabies virus each year. The majority of those contract the…

Radio waves, microwaves, gamma rays… all of these waves are made of the same ‘stuff’ – oscillating electric and magnetic fields moving at the speed of light. But that doesn’t mean they’re all alike. The various types of electromagnetic waves have different properties that are determined by their wavelengths – these can vary from the size of galaxies to smaller than the nucleus of an atom. Depending on the wave, they can either carry vast quantities of information or enable us to take a peek inside the human body. They can help us treat cancer and can offer up clues about the origin of the universe. Others help make life on Earth possible, while some can kill us. GAMMA RAYS WAVELENGTH: <0.01 NANOMETRES These are created by radioactive decay. The…

Sudoku Complete the grid so that each row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9 EASY MEDIUM HARD Word search Find the following words STEALTH TEMPEST FOOD CEPHEID GREENLAND WONDER BUTTERFLY POPE CABLE WEIGH ZOMBIE QUAKE What is it? Hint: See you later… A Spot the difference See if you can find all six changes between the images below Answers Find the solutions to last issue’s puzzle pages Q1 27 PER CENT Q2 TO LET LESS LIGHT IN Q3 TYPES OF LAVA FLOW Q4 THE SAME SPEED Q5 2.5 PER CENT Q6 PACIFIC WALRUS What is it? FINGERNAIL Spot the difference QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS Q1 The word ‘muscle’ comes from the Latin for what? ■ Strength■ Little mouse■ Massive■ Fibre bundle Q2 Which of these creatures doesn’t lay…

1,731 GRAMS China’s Chang’e 5 mission returned nearly two kilograms of precious lunar samples 28,000 YEARS OLD Sparta, a cave lion cub, is one of the world’s best preserved ice-age animals ONE IN FOUR Ginger cats are much less likely to be female Dwarf planet Pluto was named by an eight-year-old girl 20% One-fifth of the food we eat is used to fuel our brains 250 CALORIES A casual walk for an hour can burn off a slice of pizza RED PANDAS ARE MORE CLOSELY RELATED TO BADGERS THAN THE GIANT PANDA 1.8 SECONDS Japan’s Aspark Owl supercar can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in less than two seconds 1998 Capital punishment was only completely abolished in the UK less than 30 years ago THE SEEDS ON THE OUTSIDE…

SPACE China and Russia to build a power plant on the Moon WORDS BEN TURNER Russia has signed a deal with China to build a nuclear power plant on the Moon. The Russian reactor will be used to power the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), jointly led by China and Russia, and should be completed by 2036, according to a memorandum of cooperation signed by the two nations. The announcement comes just after NASA revealed a 2026 budget proposal that would axe the agency’s plans for an orbital lunar base. The construction of the Chinese-Russian reactor will likely be carried out autonomously without the presence of humans, according to a 2024 interview with Yury Borisov, director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. While details of how this can be…

In February 2025, tech giant Meta announced a new business venture: subsea cabling. Not only will the umbrella company of Facebook be adding to the 570 active undersea cable systems, but its own, dubbed Project Waterworth, will become the longest ever laid. On completion, the cable could extend for 31,000 miles, reaching five major continents along the way. To compare, Earth’s circumference is just under 25,000 miles. According to Meta, the goal of the project is to “strengthen the scale and reliability of the world’s digital highways by opening three new oceanic corridors with the abundant, high-speed connectivity needed to drive artificial intelligence innovation around the world”. Unlike power subsea cables, which transport energy between nations, project Waterworth will be a communications cable, using 24 pairs of specialised glass fibres…

Much of the technology we take for granted today seems like it must have been a fairly recent invention. Science and technology progress rapidly, after all. It’s only been 36 years since Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the World Wide Web, and already life without it is unimaginable. But scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find that there are plenty of seemingly modern creations that reared their heads many years ago – albeit in less successful forms. Sometimes, it appears, a piece of technology comes along before consumers are ready for it. Here are a few of the surprising forerunners of the technology many of us use every day… FIRST WIRELESS PHONE Not content with creating the telephone in 1876, Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell followed up his seminal invention in…

Vitiligo is a skin condition that impacts 70 million people around the world and causes patches of skin to be lighter than a person’s usual skin tone. The condition is thought to be the result of an autoimmune response, which means the body’s immune system wrongly targets and attacks harmless cells. In this case, the cells attacked are called melanocytes – pigment-producing cells. When melanocytes are reduced, and in some areas there are none, no melanin is released into surrounding cells, reducing colouring in the area. When these light areas of skin are less than one centimetre wide, they’re called macules; they’re referred to as patches when they grow larger. At the early stages of vitiligo, the skin displays just a few small macules – most commonly on the hands,…

MAKE A GLOVE GARDEN Watch as seeds germinate into seedlings that shoot from cotton wool balls 1 GATHER YOUR MATERIALS Make sure you have all of your materials ready. You can attach the glove to a line of string using a peg to secure it, instead of taping it to a window, as in step 7. 2 WRITE YOUR LABELS Along the fingers of the glove, write the names of the seeds that will go in each one. 3 DIP THE COTTON Take a cotton ball and dip it into your cup of water. Squeeze it so any excess water is removed. 4 FOLD IN A SEED Place one of the larger seeds into the centre of the cotton ball and then fold the cotton over it so that the…