10 Things We Learnt In February, 2026

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Here at Gowing Life, we are keeping our fun record of everything we learn in 2026, be it longevity-related or something else entirely. Here is a selection of our newly acquired neural connections for the month of February!

1: Dippers: A group of birds that dive underwater for food, remaining below the surface for up to a minute at a time. Some even make their nests behind waterfalls.

2: Using mosquito probosces for 3D printing: 3D printing biological tissues and organs requires very fine nozzles, and one group of scientists was struggling to manufacture a nozzle narrow enough for their needs. Enter the mosquito proboscis. With a bore of around 20 micrometres (roughly three times wider than a red blood cell) the proboscis is extremely precise, but also surprisingly durable while being extremely cheap. Researchers were able to use probosces to print various biological scaffolds, and called this technique ‘necroprinting’.

3: Ynsect, the company that built what was planned to be the largest insect farm in the world in Amiens, France. The farm was designed to output 200,000 metric tonnes of insect products per year, primarily for use in animal feed and pet food. Insects like mealworms convert low-value agricultural byproducts into high-value protein, but use minimal amounts of land and with a small carbon footprint. Unfortunately, the project ultimately failed due to a variety of factors, including technical issues at the plant itself. Images from inside the factory show machinery covered in spider webs, flies and bird faeces, and even electrical wires chewed by insects. The company was placed into judicial liquidation in December 2025, marking the end of the project.

4: That time an American oil company accidentally destroyed a lake: In November 1980, an oil rig contracted by the oil brand Texaco was drilling in Lake Peigneur, Louisiana. While trying to free the drill after it became stuck, it suddenly moved forcefully to the side. The workers were evacuated and watched as the entire oil rig was sucked underwater – a shock, given that the lake was only 3 metres deep on average. It turned out that the drill had penetrated an operational salt mine below the lake. Water from the lake then dissolved the salt pillar supports of the lowest level tunnels, causing the entire mine to collapse (fortunately all workers were evacuated in time). This created a massive whirlpool that swallowed several barges as well as a chunk of the land around the edges of the lake. As the water entered the mine, it pressurised the air inside and created a 120 metre-tall geyser at the mine entrance. It also caused the canal being fed by the lake to flow backwards. By the time the lake had refilled after 2 days, its average depth had increased from 3 metres to 60 metres (making it the deepest in Louisiana) and it had become a saltwater lake. Subsequent investigations failed to determine blame, but it is likely that either the maps provided by the mining company were inaccurate, or the engineers in charge of the operation simply made a catastrophic miscalculation.

5: The SKK Arena: The Sports and Concert Complex in St Petersburg was a soviet era project completed in 1979 and demolished in 2020, despite protests by locals who wished to preserve the building. It was known for its distinctive architecture, including its concave roof (as opposed to the domed roofs that are more common in regions that receive heavy snowfall). The demolition was marred by irregularities that led some to suspect corruption. The company also committed many safety violations, culminating in the death of a worker when they cut through a support structure, leading to the near-complete collapse of the building. Remarkably, this event was captured by a drone.

6: The Kix cereal atomic bomb ring: In 1947, when radiation was still taken a little less seriously than it is today, the American cereal brand Kix offered an ‘atomic bomb ring’ with their cereal. The ring contained small amounts of polonium-210, which emits alpha-radiation – a type of radiation that does not penetrate the skin, but is most dangerous when the source is ingested. Looking through the ring’s lens in a dark room would reveal flashes of light caused by alpha particles striking a zinc sulphide screen. In the unlikely event that you own one of these rings without having known what it was, then fear not. Since polonium-210 has a half-life of just 138 days, any surviving rings will no longer flash and should be safe for human consumption, as all of the polonium will have decayed to harmless lead (please don’t actually eat your Kix atomic bomb ring).

7: The Library of Babel is a short story published in 1941 by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. It imagines a library that contains all possible 410-page books. Yet with modern computing, the Library of Babel can become real. The Library of Babel website, if ever completed, would contain every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters, meaning that it would contain essentially every book that will ever be written. Through generation of 3200-character pages, it currently ‘contains’ 10⁴⁶⁷⁷ books (1 followed by 4677 zeros). To describe 10⁴⁶⁷⁷ as an ‘astronomically’ large number would be inaccurate because this number makes the universe look small. There are estimated to be around 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe. The Planck volume (the smallest unit of space representing indivisible quantum space) fits inside the universe around 4.6*10¹⁸⁵ times. These are both infinitesimally small numbers compared to 10⁴⁶⁷⁷. In other words, don’t expect to chance upon an actual book while browsing the library.

8: War of the colour wheels: The first colour wheel is attributed to Sir Isaac Newton in his book ‘Opticks’. However, it wasn’t long before a rival colour wheel was proposed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who would become a staunch opponent of Newton’s teachings. While still ultimately based on scientific observations, Goethe assigned more importance to the psychological effects of colour. He also believed that colour was the result of the interaction between light and dark, and that the prism contributed to the arising of colour rather than simply splitting white light into its constituent parts. Aside from Newton’s colour wheel being asymmetrical (as a result of his desire to have seven colours to fit his musical notes analogy) Newton’s more scientific approach prevailed and his colour wheel ended up being closer to modern versions.

9: The record for the longest manned flight without landing was set in 1958 when a Cessna 172, flown by American WWII bomber pilot Robert Timm and copilot John Wayne Cook, remained in the air for 64 days, 22 hours, and 19 minutes. The plane was refuelled from a truck that would drive alongside the plane on a long stretch of road, and food and water were passed up to the pilots. After 39 days the generator stopped working, which meant no light or heating, and fuel had to be hand-pumped. At one point Timm fell asleep while flying for over an hour, but rudimentary autopilot kept the plane in the air. In terms of distance, the plane could have flown around the Earth 6 times during its flight, but instead spent most of its time in the Las Vegas deserts.

10: Jet fuel is so expensive that analysts have predicted that weight loss drugs such as Ozempic will result in material earnings for American airlines. Passengers are typically the third biggest contributor to aircraft weight at takeoff after the airframe itself and the fuel. A 1% reduction in passenger weight is estimated to improve fuel efficiency by up to 0.75% depending on the aircraft and the flight distance.