10 Things We Learnt In March, 2026

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 March!

1: The colour of the Sun: Most of us think of the Sun as being a warm yellow or orange colour, but this is not the true colour of the Sun. Our star only appears coloured as a result of the scattering of blue light by the atmosphere, resulting in a more orange appearance when the Sun is close to the horizon, and becoming paler as the Sun rises. When viewed from space, the Sun is effectively white, since all wavelengths it emits are seen equally (though its peak emission is technically within the yellow-green range of the spectrum). However, most high resolution images of the Sun – including those taken from space – use filters that isolate low wavelength light, making the Sun appear very orange. This is the colour that usually appears in media too, further enhancing the perception that this is the Sun’s true colour. Stars that are older or smaller (and thus cooler) do emit primarily red light, but the Sun isn’t one of them. To make matters even more confusing, the Sun is classified as a G2 V star or yellow dwarf, but this is more of a historical term based on temperature (meaning the Sun is between a blue star and a red dwarf in terms of temperature), not its actual colour.

2: Scientists in Japan have developed a technology that could boost solar power efficiency to 130%. But wait a second, how is it possible to have an efficiency above 100%? Well, the number is a little misleading – it actually refers to the number of energy carriers generated per photon (the exciton yield), not the energy efficiency. The technology relies on a process called singlet fission, in which certain materials can cause higher energy photons to generate two low-energy excitons instead of a single high energy one. Because excess energy from high energy excitons is lost as heat when converted into electricity, splitting them into two allows much more of the energy contained within high-energy wavelengths (like blue light) to be captured. It’s a bit like buying from a vending machine that doesn’t give change – if the items in the machine cost £5 each, then you’d want to split your single £10 note into £5 notes to ensure you got the most out of your money.

3: The taste of space booze: Near the Aquila constellation, 10,000 light years from Earth, there is a giant cloud of space alcohol. The Sagittarius B2 cloud is 1000 times the diameter of the Solar System and contains 400 quintillion (400 x 10¹⁸) litres of alcohol. However, before you start cobbling together a space rocket in some drunkard version of Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out, know that you probably don’t want to drink this particular alcohol, as it’s mostly methanol with hints of hydrogen cyanide. Oh, and it would apparently taste like raspberry rum. We know this because it contains ethyl formate, responsible for the flavour raspberries.

4: The NASA AD-1: An experimental oblique wing aircraft in which the wings would pivot up to a 60 degree angle at high speeds, reducing drag and increasing fuel efficiency. Though it worked, it was apparently rather unpleasant to pilot due to poor handling at more extreme wing angles, and the project was discontinued in 1982.

5: This video showing that mixing can be a reversible process. When diffusion is taken out of the equation (such as in viscous fluids), mixing is a deterministic process – so long as the mixing motion is perfectly repeated in reverse, any mixed substances can be unmixed and returned to their original state.

6: Why does plastic whiten when stretched or bent? Some materials such as metals have a crystalline structure, meaning that the arrangement of the atoms within the material is ordered and forms a repeating pattern. When such a material is bent, its atoms simply slide over each other to adopt a new formation, but the microscopic structure remains constant. By contrast, most plastics are either amorphous (meaning molecules are randomly arranged) or have both amorphous and crystalline regions. Polymer chains within those amorphous regions cannot rearrange themselves easily, instead resulting in the formation of microscopic voids called crazes when bent or stretched. These crazes scatter light that reflects off the plastic and causes it to appear whiter.

7: People’s morals appear to change when they use a non-native language. A study presented multilingual people with a version of the trolley problem – would they push a person in front of a train if this was the only way to stop the train and save 5 people who were stuck on the tracks? They found that people from 5 different countries were significantly more likely to choose the more ‘utilitarian’ option – kill one to save 5 – if the question was posed in their second language, compared to if their native tongue was used. However, if presented with a less emotional version of the problem – pulling a lever to divert the train instead of pushing someone onto the tracks – then the effect of language was reduced. This aligns with other experiments suggesting that using a non-native language creates ’emotional distance’ from decisions, resulting in thinking that places emphasis on the common good over morality. This could have real world implications, such as in international organisations that often use English as their default language.

8: Why isn’t September the seventh month, October the 8th and so on? Contrary to a common misconception, it is not Julius Caesar’s fault for ‘adding’ the months of July and August. Caesar only renamed the existing months of Quintilis and Sextilis, which were the seventh and eighth months – in other words, the Romans had already mucked up their calendar by the time Caesar entered the scene. What happened? The original calendar of the Roman Republic had only 10 months, with September being the seventh, October the 8th and so on. However, this meant the calendar year was too short – there were 61 unassigned days at the end. According to most sources, the second King of Rome added January and February. Since January was named after Janus, god of doorways, beginnings and transitions, it made religious sense for January to be the first month of the year. However, since the Roman consuls took office in March, March was still considered the start of the civil year, so the months of Quintilis onward still made sense. In 153 BCE the Romans decided to make the 1st of January the start of the civil year, cementing it as the first month and December as the 12th. If they’d known that most of the world would be stuck with their scuffed calendar over 2000 years later, perhaps they would have made more of an effort to fix it.

9: Checkmate has not occurred in a World Chess Championship since 1929, and that was the only time it has ever occurred. Since professional chess players know many turns in advance that they will be forced into checkmate, there is no point actually playing to the point at which checkmate occurs. In fact, it would be considered rude to make your opponent actually checkmate you, and chess players are a polite bunch – well, mostly. I wasn’t able to find out why the game actually progressed to checkmate in this particular case – it may simply have come as a complete surprise.

10: Origin of the term ‘mind-boggling’: The verb ‘to boggle’ used to describe horses starting with fright, possibly because of the noun ‘bogle’ meaning an evil spirit – thus a horse reacting as though to an invisible spirit only it can see is ‘boggling’. It then came to apply to humans. The first uses of the phrase ‘the mind boggles’ to mean ‘being baffled attempting to imagine or comprehend something’ appears to have occurred in the late 1800s, while the more commonly used ‘mind-boggling’ seems to be more recent, taking over in the last 50 years or so.