Blue eyed people listen up. Ever wondered why your eyes are the colour they are? Well wonder no more. Every blue eyed person is descended from a single European who lived around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, according to scientists. How did they work it out? Originally, all humans had brown eyes in various shades until there was a specific mutation that made the change. The mutation is a gene called HERC2 and it switches off OCA2, the gene that determines how much brown pigment we make. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter So that's why eyes become blue. As for being descended from the same person, the evidence for this is because every blue eyed person alive today has this same mutation. Scientists reckon only 8 to 10 per cent of the population have blue eyes and eyes don't fully develop in childhood meaning the brown pigment can kick in later, causing blue eyed children to end up with brown eyes in adulthood. So if you have blue eyes, now you know - your family is a lot bigger than you might have thought previously. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The structure of the Earth beneath our feet has been fascinating to members of the scientific community recently, and it turns out it’s far more complex than people initially thought. First, we learned of the news that there’s a massive ocean beneath the Earth’s crust which contains more water than all of the seas on the surface. Now, another study has been published which has taken an in-depth look at the geology beneath the southern hemisphere. The new research, published in Science Advances, has found evidence that an entire ocean floor actually runs the length around the core. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter This is a relatively thin layer that sits on the core-mantle boundary around 1,800 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It's an ancient formation that could provide more insight into the structure of the planet beneath our feet. Geologist Samantha Hansen and her colleagues from the University of Alabama led the research. They observed the structure by using 15 monitoring stations under the ice of Antarctica, mapping the waves from earthquakes. Doing this allowed them to analyse the structure of the Earth below the surface, including the ultra-low velocity zones where waves moved much slower. "Seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought," Hansen said. "Analyzing [thousands] of seismic recordings from Antarctica, our high-definition imaging method found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB everywhere we probed," geophysicist Edward Garnero from Arizona State University also said. "The material's thickness varies from a few kilometers to [tens] of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to five times taller than Mt. Everest." "Our research provides important connections between shallow and deep Earth structure and the overall processes driving our planet," Hansen added. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Facebook-parent Meta is the subject of four new complaints from human rights groups in Europe alleging that the algorithm it uses to target users with companies' job advertisements is discriminatory. Nonprofit Global Witness shared new research with CNN that it says shows the algorithm distributing job ads is based on gender stereotypes, and that it appears to be a global issue.

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Energy drinks could be the secret to a long life - here's why. The drinks contain a substance called taurine, a naturally occurring amino acid that scientists have been testing on mice and worms and working out that it is increasing their life spans. The study saw some mice at around middle-age given taurine, whereas others weren’t. Mice of both sexes saw increased life span by around 10 to 12 per cent, whereas life expectancy at 28 months was 18 to 25 per cent higher. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter They also had healthier bone, muscle, immune system, fat, pancreas, brain, and gut functioning. In the journal Science, the team wrote: "Taurine abundance decreases during aging. "A reversal of this decline through taurine supplementation increases health span and life span in mice and worms and health span in monkeys. “This identifies taurine deficiency as a driver of aging in these species." They added: "Given that taurine has no known toxic effects in humans (though rarely used in concentrations used here), can be administered orally, and affects all the major hallmarks of aging, human trials are warranted to examine whether taurine supplementation increases healthy life span in humans." However, scientists aren’t advising anyone to change their taurine intake, as research is still in its early days, and energy drinks have other ingredients that may not be as positive. Prof Henning Wackerhage, from the University of Munich, said: "What we really need now is a human intervention study. “We are raring to go." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Twitter has been a powerful tool for social movements. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, some organizers and digital media experts have been bracing for the impact that his controversial policy changes and mass layoffs may have on social activism.

Three years after Silicon Valley companies led the charge for embracing remote work in the early days of the pandemic, the tech industry is now escalating the fight to bring employees back into the office -— and igniting tensions with staff in the process.

When Apple unveiled its ambitious and very pricey new mixed reality headset earlier this week, executives ticked through a long list of impressive specs, teased big name partnerships and showed off a perfectly produced promo video.

(Reuters) -Twitter will soon begin paying verified content creators for ads in their replies, with the first payment block of

Italy's biggest telecoms company Telecom Italia (TIM) said on Friday it received two new offers for its landline

Authentication software company Okta Inc. plans to devote about $40 million of its annual research and development budget