Tag Archives: sperm

Human sperm are famously good swimmers, yet the physics of their motion has puzzled scientists for decades. Thick cervical mucus or lab-made gels should throttle any cell only fifty microns long, but sperm shoot through with surprising ease. That puzzle finally cracked when a Kyoto University team revealed that the sperm tail’s internal mechanics side step Newton’s third law, the …

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, A week ago, I learned that my 35-year-old son donated sperm to a lesbian couple he’s friends with, and they just had a girl. He’s not married and has expressed no interest in having children, so this came as a complete shock. My son is an only child, and I have …

Scientists have uncovered the oldest known fossilized animal sperm, found preserved in a 50-million-year-old cocoon from Antarctica. This unprecedented finding pushes back the timeline of such discoveries by a full 10 million years. A Remarkable Discovery in Antarctica The discovery was made by Dr. Benjamin Bomfleur from the Swedish Museum of Natural History and his research team. The sperm, which …

Tiny organisms live in a world where the usual rules of motion feel upside-down. Water that slips through our fingers turns syrupy at their scale, dragging against every twitch. Yet a sperm cell or a green alga skims along as if the goo were barely there. Sperm are such great swimmers because of a slender flagellum that ripples like a …

Semen, sperm, spunk, cum, ejaculate, pre-cum, seminal fluid. These are just some of the many words we use to describe what comes out of an erect penis. Some of these terms can be used interchangeably, but they’re not all the same. Do you know the difference? What is sperm? Sperm are male reproductive (sex) cells. The word “sperm” can refer …

Human sperm have long been a subject of fascination—not just for their role in fertilization, but for their remarkable ability to navigate through some of the most viscous environments in the body. But a recent study published in PRX Life has raised a surprising question: do sperm really follow the laws of physics? The answer, it turns out, is more …

In a remarkable discovery, archaeologists have uncovered a sperm whale tooth at the Valencina de la Concepción-Castilleja de Guzmán site, located southwest of Seville, Spain. This find, dating to the 3rd millennium BCE, is the first of its kind on the Iberian Peninsula, offering new insights into prehistoric Iberian cultures. The tooth was uncovered during an excavation project in 2018, …

It’s a commonly held belief: Sperm cells are like runners in an epic race, competing against each other for access to the coveted egg at the finish line. The egg, in turn, waits patiently for the winning sperm to pierce its outer membrane, triggering fertilization. This narrative of racing sperm and waiting eggs has persisted through time — and yet, …