A Turing machine is a hypothetical machine thought of by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Despite its simplicity, the machine can simulate ANY computer algorithm, no matter how complicated it is.

Put simply, the Turing machine isn't a physical machine, but you can imagine it as an never-ending line of tape, broken down into squares. On each of those squares is a 1, a 0, or nothing at all. The machine reads one square at a time, and depending on what it reads, it performs an action - it either erases the number and writes a new one before moving on, or simply moves on to a different square.

Each of those actions, which mathematicians call a 'state', are determined by the mathematical algorithm or problem the Turing machine has been desi ...

The Giant African earthworm (Microchaetus rappi) can grow to 22 feet (or 6.7 meters) and weigh as over 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg). It is the largest of the segmented worms (commonly called earthworms).

Mary Ann Franco, now 70 years old, lost here eyesight in 1995 when a car accident damaged her spine. More than two decades after the initial injury, she fell in her home and injured her neck, sending her to the hospital once again to seek treatment for pain in her arm and back. After doctors decided to perform surgery on her back to alleviate her pain, they happened to cure her blindness. It is suspected that her first injury caused a lack of blood flow to the brain that controls eyesight, and this operation restored it. Interestingly, Franco has been colour blind since birth, but the operation seems to have fixed that problem, too.

The spinal cords running down our spines carry a bundle of nerve tissue and other cells from the base of the b ...

Collected from the Ross Sea shelf in southern Antarctica, this 9.8-inch-long (25-centimeter-long) giant sea spider was one of 30,000 animals found during a 35-day census in early 2008. The marine arachnids, which prey on hydroids and bryzoans - branching, coral-like animals - are larger and more common in Antarctic waters than anywhere else on Earth. Cold temperatures, few predators, and high levels of oxygen in seawater could explain their gargantuan size.

The octopus stinkhorn mushroom (Clathrus archeri) looks like an octopus and stinks like rotten flesh in order to attract the flies that spread its spores. This fungus is indigenous to Australia, including Tasmania, and New Zealand, and an introduced species in Europe, North America and Asia.

As shown in the video, the young fungus erupts from a sub-erumpent egg by forming into four to seven elongated slender arms initially erect and attached at the top. The arms then unfold to reveal a pinkish-red interior covered with a dark-olive spore-containing gleba. In maturity it smells of putrid flesh.

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