10 Things We Learnt In May, 2025

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Here at Gowing Life, we are keeping our fun record of everything we learn in 2025, be it longevity-related or something else entirely. Here is a selection of our newly acquired neural connections for the month of May!

1: This aerial photograph from British Columbia shows how a single beaver dam holds back sediment pollution after heavy rainfall, protecting freshwater habitats.

2: Beavers have saved Czech taxpayers around £1m by building in a dam in the exact place officials planned on building one. The project was planned to protect endangered fish in Klabava River from sediment and acidic water from two nearby ponds, but had been on hold since 2018.

3: Pingos: Hills that can be up to 70 metres tall and contain an icy core. Many such pingos existed in Norfolk, melting and becoming pingo pools at the end of the last ice age. Now some of these pools are being rediscovered and excavated after having been filled for farmland. Despite being buried for so long, rare seeds buried in the sediments of such pools can still germinate, reviving these ancient pools.

4: Kiwi eggs can weigh up to 25% of the body weight of the mother, making them one of the largest eggs in proportion to female body size among birds. Kiwis are about the size of a domestic chicken, but their eggs are about six times the size of a chicken egg. The eggs are so large that female kiwis have to eat about 3 times their normal food intake to sustain their growth. The male kiwi usually incubates the egg.

5: The imperial boomerang: A term originating from French poet, author and politician Aimé Césaire. It refers to the idea that the rise of European fascism in the 20th century, as well as their cruel methods of repression, was partly attributable to colonialism. It argues that, because European colonial powers had already been repressing populations abroad for a long time, it was easier to then turn those methods of repression against their own populations – a ‘boomerang’ effect.

6: An infographic showing the dose of various substances required to kill 50% of those exposed (note that most of these are based on animal evidence – the dose needed to kill a human may vary). You can find the full infographic here.

7: For the first time ever, antimatter can now be transported in a truck. Using a 2 metre-long containment device, around 100 unbonded protons produced at CERN were successfully trapped and moved about 4km before being returned to the lab, without any of them reacting with anything. This means that the same approach should be possible with antiprotons. As there are very few sites in the world that can produce antimatter, this development could allow antimatter to be transported from a central site to other labs via road networks.

8: Scientists don’t yet understand exactly how galaxies as we observe them today were formed. The prevailing theory is that, after the Big Bang, smaller ‘clumps’ of matter merged into galaxies over time, aided by the gravitational effects of dark matter. However, the James Webb telescope recently observed that some galaxies in the early universe could be far larger and more developed than would be expected, given the short (cosmologically speaking) amount of time they had to form. Despite forming ‘only’ 800 million years into the universe’s 13.8 billion-year life, the galaxy named ZF-UDS-7329 contained more stars than our Milky Way. This suggests that we are still missing important parts of the puzzle when it comes to understanding how the first concentrations of matter in the early universe came together.

9: Toy Biz v. United States: A 2003 court case that would have dire implications for X-Men fans. The United States had two different tariff rates for dolls (defined as human figures) and toys (which included “nonhuman creatures”). Because duties on dolls were almost twice as high as those on toys (12% vs 6.2%), Toy Biz (later called Marvel Toys) argued that their products (which included X-Men action figures) were non-human creatures and therefore toys. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled in favour of Toy Biz: X-Men were ‘non-human creatures’. With prejudice against mutants struggling to prove their humanity being a central theme of X-Men, many fans found this ruling quite unpalatable.

10: Pope Celestine V: In 1294, two years after the death of the previous pope, the cardinals still had not managed to elect a new one. Frustrated by this, a monk named Pietro Angelerio wrote an angry letter to the cardinals, warning them of ‘divine vengeance’ if they did not elect a new pope soon. Clearly spurred by this warning, the cardinals swiftly elected Pietro Angelerio as pope. Pietro first attempted to flee, but was eventually persuaded to adopt the position, becoming Pope Celestine in July 1294. Later that year, he decreed that popes had the right to resign. Then, he resigned.