In the 1940s, pilots flew into thunderstorms to learn about their formation and properties as part of the Thunderstorm Project, the first multi-agency meteorological project mandated by Congress.

Data centers can be kept cool by circulating fluid over plates atop high-temperature components or by submerging equipment in non-corrosive oil that does not conduct electricity.

Learn about the missions comprising the Artemis program, which aim to return humanity to the moon and develop the technology for future human space exploration.

The Academy of Lynxes—a 17th-century science academy—was co-founded by an 18-year-old whose father suspected he was associating with sorcerers and magicians.

Mangrove forests can store up to four times as much carbon as other forests and protect inland areas through complex root systems that absorb wave energy and hold mud and soil in place.

Antarctica has two adjacent ATMs installed by Wells Fargo in 1998 to serve the population of McMurdo Station, a research facility that houses up to 1,000 people.

Tom Liggett, a Bournemouth University student, sent photographic film into space using a helium balloon, producing photographs from cosmic rays—high-energy particles traveling through space at near-light speed.

The Amazon molly is an all-female organism that has been cloning itself for 100,000 years without accumulating harmful mutations.

Despite lacking a traditional nervous system, plants have specialized cells that help detect gravity, enabling them to identify which way is down to grow roots and which way is up to push shoots toward the surface.

Discover the chemistry behind smoking foods, including the types of smoking and the source of smoking flavors and colors.

Metamorphosis evolved over millions of years as species that hatched as smaller versions of adults started exhibiting genetic mutations that differentiated juvenile and adult bodies.

When testing climate models, computer simulations suggest that Middle-earth should be covered by forests—matching a description in 'The Lord of the Rings'—and that Westeros's long winters in 'Game of Thrones' may be linked to a wobbling planet.

If the sun disappeared, we would not know about it for 8 minutes and 20 seconds, at which point the Earth would suddenly move in a straight line on its way out of the solar system.

Despite the visibility of lasers in space battles within science fiction, they are impossible to see in outer space unless they are pointed directly at an observer.

Fish in polar waters contain proteins in their blood that act as antifreeze, and some manufacturers have used lab-grown versions of these proteins to help keep ice cream smooth.

Watch a diving expedition through the world's longest coral colony, which spans more than a football field and whose exact location is kept secret for its protection.

Permafrost—soil, rocks, and sand that are held together by ice and remain frozen for at least two consecutive years—covers about 15% of the Northern Hemisphere's land area.

Iron rusts in the presence of water and oxygen because these ingredients enable the metal atoms to release energy and enter a more stable state.

Japanese scientists have developed an eco-friendly plastic that naturally dissolves in hours, leaving behind molecules containing phosphorus and nitrogen, which fertilize soil.

Learn about the seven types of plastic, including their recyclability, toxicity, health risks, and common uses.

Watch a demonstration of the greenhouse effect with carbon dioxide, where thermal energy is trapped by the gas within a container, causing the temperature to increase.

When signing the Paris agreement, almost 200 nations committed to pursuing efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, based on guidance from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

By analyzing the color of starlight, astronomers can determine how fast stars within a galaxy are moving toward or away from Earth, revealing the expansion rate of the universe.

Type Ia supernovae—explosions caused by the remnants of low-mass stars being reignited—brighten and dim so consistently that they are used as cosmic rulers to measure distances across the universe.

View a gallery of animals found on abyssal plains, hydrothermal vents, seamounts, and other deep-sea habitats.

Whale falls—dead whales that have fallen to the ocean's floor—can provide enough food to spawn a local ecosystem of deep-sea organisms that lasts for decades.

HALEU, or High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium, is a next-generation nuclear fuel with higher energy density—three tablespoons of it are enough to supply the average person's electricity use for their entire lifetime.

Microreactors are 100 to 1,000 times smaller than traditional nuclear reactors but still generate thermal energy for heating or electricity by splitting atomic nuclei.

Ahead of constructing a lunar base as part of the Artemis program, NASA will send a fleet of hopping drones to scout the moon's south pole.

In 2018, it took about 2.3 years to develop a way to exploit a software bug for malicious purposes, but as of 2026, AI tools have reduced this time to about 20 hours.

Researchers report that Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI model has identified thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities across various software, including major operating systems and web browsers, and has suggested ways to exploit them.

View historical records of solar observations and discoveries, from telescopes in the early 1600s revealing sunspots to NASA's Parker Solar Probe photographing the sun from within its outer corona in 2025.

Studies estimating the number of years between human generations suggest there have been approximately 10,000 to 12,000 generations of humans.

Electric grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.

Coral reefs get their colors from zooxanthellae—microorganisms that line corals' digestive tracts and provide them with sugars in exchange for a home within this protective tissue.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Learn how critical services, infrastructure, and people would be impacted by a US-scale blackout—a nationwide, long-term failure of the electric grid.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.