The potential cost
of people pulling ‘sickies’
in the UK each year.US$12
billion
The amount by which the
Dead Sea’s surface level is
dropping each year.metre
PHOTOS: PRESS ASSOCIATION, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Probably not. Whole body
cryotherapy involves
exposing the entire body
to dry air temperatures of
-100°C for two to four
minutes. There have been
a few studies that found it
helps relieve muscle
soreness after exercise,
but a 2015 Cochrane
review concluded that
these were not well-
designed studies and the
evidence was “of very low
quality”. The evidence that
it boosts the immune
system is even weaker. LVDoes
cryotherapy
work?
No, a black hole is not really a
hole at all. A black hole is an
object just like any other,
except that it is extremely
dense. This gives it such a
high gravitational field that
nothing, not even light, can
escape. Because no light
escapes a black hole, it is
invisible – or ‘black’ – although
they can be detected by their
effect on the material around
them. The term ‘hole’ was
used because whatever falls
‘into’ a black hole is trapped
forever. Science fiction often
depicts black holes as portals
between different parts of the
Universe, different times or
different universes altogether.This may be why it is often
misconstrued that black holes
are ‘holes’ in space-time. This
concept isn’t entirely fictional,
however. In 1935, Albert
Einstein and Nathan Rosen
proposed ‘wormholes’
through space-time, which
could provide a means of
traversing large distances
instantaneously. But a
naturally occurring black hole
doesn’t form a wormhole by
default. In fact, there are
doubts they could occur
naturally at all, that they would
remain stable for more than a
fraction of a second or that
they would be anything bigger
than vanishingly small. AGIs a black hole really a hole?
IN NUMBERS