Worm cocktail: photograph of the experimental apparatus showing the sludge worms. (Courtesy: Antoine Deblais) Clumps of wriggling – and sometimes drunken – sludge worms have been used by physicists in ...

You wake up, slightly intoxicated as tap water rinses over your body. You don’t remember why you’re here, but you’re joined by hundreds of fellow sludge worms, wriggling slowly. You start to remember: ...