Scientists claim the D'oh catchphrase of Homer Simpson could have been one of the first words ever uttered by modern man.

Boffins from the University of Amsterdam say this is because of the way in which our prehistoric ancestors vocal tract was formed.

The shape and mechanics of the mouth and throat meant that while speech would have been limited, the 'u' sound would have been one of the easiest to make.

Dr de Boer -- who studied the hyoid bone of ancient vocal tracts -- says this would frequently have been put together to make 'Duh' and 'Buh' sounds.

He suggests the first words would have been spoken about million years ago… and are not dissimilar to those used by many men today.

A team of researchers in the US have created the world's lightest material -- which is about one hundred times lighter than Styrofoam.

The new material is said to redefine the limits of lightweight materials because of its unique “micro-lattice” cellular architecture.

That means researchers were able to make a material that consists of 99.99 percent air by designing the 0.01 percent solid at the nanometer, micron and millimeter scales.

"The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair,” said lead author Dr Tobias Schaedler.

A couple of years ago we made up a April Fools story that iPods get heavier with more music -- so  we approached this story with some trepidation.

But according to respected scientists from University of California, Berkeley, E-readers really do get heavier with each book. Honest.

Prof John Kubiatowicz recently claimed that holding more books on your Kindle does make it heavier -- even though each new book is only as heavy as a single molecule of DNA.

Kubiatowicz claims this is because storing new data involves holding electrons in a fixed place and take up more energy. Personally we preferred our explanation about the ratio of ones to zeros.

Last year Alan Billis was a taxi driver in Torquay, now he's become the first person in 3,000 years to be mummified like Tutankhamum -- all in the name of a TV show.

Before his death from lung cancer in January, Alan had signed on to be part of a bizarre experiment in mummification, to be filmed for Channel 4.

In a bid to better understand how the ancient Egyptians were able to preserve pharaohs perfectly for millennia the 61-year-old's corpse was put through a variety of special techniques.

Scientists now think -- thanks to Alan -- they've been able to crack the mystery of mummification and say their finding turn much accepted wisdom about the process it's bandaged head.

Beach-goers in Southern California are being treated to a rare light show with waves there glowing bright blue as the crash at night.

The rare phenomena is caused by the presence of a bio-luminescent algae called Lingulodinium polyedrum.

During the day this means the water at San Diego-area beaches appear a brownish red, but at night they look a whole lot more magical.

Boffins say movement of the water causes each organism to flash blue with a chemical reaction - when this happens billions of times as each wave crashes, you get the blue glow.

Boffins who noticed certain Australian beetles will try to have sex with discarded beer bottles have won a scientific prize.

Entomologists Professor Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for their discovery about buprestid Beetles.

They'd discovered the male beetle would try to mate with beer bottles -- but only brown ones with bobbly bits on them.

This was enough to bag the boffins the Ig Nobel Prize, which celebrates research which makes you laugh and then think.

Other winners on the night included the team who devised a wasabi fire alarm for deaf people and a group who looked at why discus throwers get dizzy.

We all know what a meteor shower looks like, we've even seen what they look like from space, but have you ever wondered what they sound like?

Well if so you're in luck, because this audio clip was recently captured by the U.S. Air Force Space Surveillance Radar in Texas.

Boffins say this is the echoes of the Perseid Meteors passing over the monitoring facility which detects, tracks and catalogues artificial objects orbiting Earth

While we think it sounds a bit like aliens trying to make contact, the experts insist that it's not… and point out that we say the same everytime the radio isn't quite tuned in.

While you might think sparrows' birdsong is a relaxing sound of the British countryside - but it's actually an aggressive exchange of insults, it's been claimed.

Academics say the soothing sounds are really more like an abusive rap battle between birds who are showing off and trying to appear macho.

The researchers from a number of Canadian universities discovered that when they're looking for a mate, male sparrows move away from their usual sweet tweeting.

Instead they become louder and more aggressive - often repeating the insulting noises of other birds - in a bid to attract attention and outdo other feathered rivals.

Personally we'd like to know what constitutes an insult for a sparrows, we're guessing it's all 'mother flapper' this and 'cockatoo' that.

Between 1% and 5% of the population - including certain Bond villains - are said to have an additional nipple… but until recently none were recorded as having one on their foot.

However, that all changed with the discovery of this foot which belongs to a 22-year-old woman and was recently featured in a dermatology journal.

Researchers say the foot nipple is particularly rare because the condition (supernumerary breast tissue) is normally found above the waist.

Unsurprisingly the owner of the nipple-totting foot has chosen to remain anonymous fearing she'd be mocked with people asking her to put her breast foot forward and dodgy puns like that… some people would really milk it.

Researchers have discovered men with index and ring fingers close to the same size are more likely than men with mismatched digits to have a long penis.

The odd findings were recently published in the Asian Journal of Andrology after being discovered by a study at Gachon University Gil Hospital in South Korea.

Boffins had recruited 144 volunteers who were undergoing urological surgery and when they were under anaesthesia measured their fingers and penis length (both flaccid and stretched).

It was then found that the smaller the difference between the two fingers, the longer the penis -- stretched penis length correlates to erect size.

But before you start staring at everyone's hands, it's worth noting the average size difference between fingers is just 0.97 cm… obviously ours is much smaller.