Science & Technology

Tardigrades can survive decades without water while curling up their microscopic, bear-like bodies into a shriveled-up ball.

The dark web cannot be stumbled upon by accident—it requires specialized software and website addresses only available on a need-to-know basis.

Hawaii is actively growing as its underlying tectonic plate moves across a hotspot that creates new volcanoes.

Watch a time-lapse of photosynthesis activity across Earth, as seen from space.

There is no such thing as nothing in physics—even the vacuum of space is full of undetectable particle-antiparticle activity called 'quantum foam.'

Ants can be turned into zombies by Cordyceps—a group of over 250 parasitic fungi that inspired the video game and show 'The Last of Us.'

Associated with wandering souls and ghost fire, will-o'-the-wisps may be the result of microlightning between bubbles.

Google's first storage server was housed in a cabinet made of Lego bricks.

Dolphins never fully fall asleep, keeping half their brains awake so they can breathe at the water's surface while resting.

Walk around Relativity Park—a virtual theme park where you can experience relativistic effects by slowing down the speed of light.

A shaken can of soda can be safely opened by tapping on the sides of the container.

Yellowstone National Park has more geysers than the rest of the world combined.

Elysia chlorotica is a sea slug that can photosynthesize, making it an animal with the defining ability of a plant.

The Concorde airliner stretched up to 10 inches while flying because friction from its supersonic speeds heated and expanded its aluminum body.

The death of his wife may have inspired Samuel Morse to invent the telegraph, which uses an electromagnet to quickly send messages over long distances.

Described as the most beautiful equation in mathematics, Euler's identity combines five unrelated but fundamental constants into one relationship.

Microplastics have entered human food chains through carrots, wheat, and other foodstuffs grown on farmland fertilized with sewage sludge.

As many as 500 million smart devices worldwide come preinstalled with malware that lets strangers use a person's internet connection.

Check out a 90-second guide to spotting AI-generated videos and the AI detection tools used by journalists.

Earth's rotation rate constantly changes, which drove the need for leap seconds to synchronize a solar day with timekeeping tools.

Radiation can create green diamonds, while red diamonds result from structural imperfections, despite being among the most valued.

The world's largest algal bloom spans from the Caribbean to West Africa.

The world's oldest isolated water is about 1.6 billion years old and has a musty, sulfuric odor.

Unlike most metals, gold is yellowish rather than silver because fast-moving electrons reduce the size of its atoms and alter how they absorb light.

Egg yolks and carrots have the same pigments that contribute to the yellow and orange colors of fall foliage.

Lining up every microbe on Earth would stretch to about 105,000 light-years—roughly the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy.

White dwarfs solidify into a diamond-like crystal from the inside out as they cool, according to research and observations.

The world's longest-running evolution experiment has tracked genetic changes in E. coli across more than 74,000 generations since 1988.

You can sharpen your vision by looking through a pinhole—the equivalent of narrowing a camera's aperture to reduce blurriness.

Despite what you've been told, dividing by zero is possible—if you're willing to make every number equal to zero.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can perform sustained backward flight.

Female Komodo dragons can have virgin births, in which unfertilized eggs only produce male hatchlings.

Nicknamed 'corpse crystals,' vivianite can grow on dead bodies if phosphate from decomposing remains combines with iron and water.

In space, fire produces spherical flames rather than the rising ones seen on Earth.

Listen to a reconstruction of the sound of the Big Bang—the first sound of the universe.

Molecules have mirrored versions with distinct properties—a discovery made while analyzing crystals formed during wine production.

The Apollo 11 mission was saved minutes before the moon landing by software developed by Margaret Hamilton—NASA's first software engineer.

Every organism on Earth evolved from a single cell—the last universal common ancestor—which lived about 4.2 billion years ago, research suggests.

Jupiter was twice its current size when it formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Deep divers would feel drunk underwater if their air supply did not include helium.

GPS satellites would become significantly inaccurate within hours if they didn't recalibrate according to Einstein's theories of relativity.

The dark web makes up about 0.01% of the data on the internet and requires specialized software to access.

Explore an interactive database of critical minerals and their uses in clean-energy technologies.

Black holes have locked away about 1% of all the matter in the universe, according to research.

You can measure the speed of light with a microwave oven and chocolate, cheese, or other uniformly thick foods.

If the Earth stopped spinning, about 85% of the world's population would experience supersonic winds.

Watch a time-lapse of the 120-day journey of a pumpkin seed growing into an adult fruit.

Electrogenic animals generate their own electricity by changing the pattern of electrical charges in disc-shaped cells called electrocytes.

'Hacking' was not associated with manipulating technology in creative ways until a 1955 meeting of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club.

Run your own particle physics lab in a clicker game made at CERN, turning collision data into discoveries, reputation, and funding.