Simulations suggest that a paper airplane launched from the International Space Station would maintain its orientation and gradually descend for 3.5 days before chaotically tumbling down and burning up.

Plato's famous allegory of the cave is a metaphor exploring the value of truth over ignorance.

'Golden blood' is the rarest blood type in the world—fewer than 50 people are known to have it.

Explore Lewis and Clark's 8,000-mile journey in Google Earth.

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines and how collision data is collected and distributed worldwide.

Located on Ross Island in Antarctica, Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and features a lava lake—one of eight known worldwide as of 2026—that erupts regularly.

Apeirophobia is the fear of everlasting life and may stem from the human brain's inability to conceptualize the concept of anything happening beyond what it can project out, such as the concept of an infinite life.

In 1962, the US detonated a nuclear weapon in space, which produced an electromagnetic pulse that disabled three low Earth orbit satellites and damaged electrical equipment in Hawaii.

The average banana produces one positron—the antimatter counterpart to an electron—every 75 minutes as its trace amounts of radioactive potassium decay.

Relax to a livestream of brown bears chilling in Katmai National Park in Alaska.

Cats have a mutation that prevents them from tasting sweetness, and goldfish rank among the world's supertasters.

Explore 3D models of some of the most dangerous viruses, allowing us to understand these and other pathogens in new ways.

Watch a two-year time-lapse of a pinecone seed transforming into a pine tree.

Pregnancy makes someone more attractive to the mosquito species that transmits malaria.

Watch 4-plus decades of Pixar's opening logos.

Streaming service Netflix's sound logo 'Tudum' was designed as a key sonic differentiator.

Lake Sørvágsvatn sits about 32 meters (105 feet) above sea level, but the taller surrounding cliffs create an optical illusion that makes it appear to float much higher above the ocean.

On a cruise ship, the average person uses about 50 gallons of water a day, which is treated by bacteria and onboard filtration systems, then stored until the ship can legally discharge the wastewater.

The US jobs projected to shrink the fastest over the next decade include typists and word processors.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks.

The Aztec Empire ruled over 80,000 square miles of central Mexico for nearly a century—until a small band of Spanish conquistadors brought it down in 1521.

If a source of music traveled past someone at twice the speed of sound, assuming sufficiently sensitive hearing and powerful equipment, they would hear the music backward.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

Washing dishware before putting it in a dishwasher may reduce the appliance's effectiveness because it dynamically adjusts wash time and temperature based on a sensor that detects dirtiness.

Emanuel Leutze's painting 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' is one of the defining images of the Revolutionary War.

Miracle berries make things that normally taste acidic or sour, such as lemons, taste sweet, like sugar-coated candy, by binding a special protein called miraculin to taste buds.

Give your memories a place to live and explore the personal stories left by strangers, tied to specific locations, in this interactive map of the world.

A dog's nose can be up to 100,000 times more sensitive than a human's, and each possesses a secondary organ for smelling, which helps learn about other dogs when they sniff each other's butts.

See a breakdown of how some of the most common food items are traded across the globe, including the key trade relationships for each item.

Explore a detailed map of Odysseus' fictional journey from 'The Odyssey.'

You may be better at spotting a lie when listening to a speaker's voice inflections rather than watching for facial and body cues.

Light takes approximately eight minutes to travel from the sun's surface to Earth, but it takes thousands of years to reach the star's surface from its core—a distance more than 200 times shorter.

Experience 14 billion years of important moments in world history with this scrollable interactive timeline.

Watch a visualization of what it would look like to move along Earth's surface as fast as the International Space Station, or about 23 times the speed of sound.

Watch Dr. Laurence Peter explain his 'Peter Principle,' which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence and explains why bosses aren't always good at their jobs.

The tallest tsunami in recorded history was 524 meters (1,720 feet) high—taller than the Empire State Building—and occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 after an earthquake dislodged a rockface into the water.

Find out how important you are to AI tools when they generate text responses with this tool, which estimates the weights of people's names.

'Tulip mania,' the 1630s Dutch craze where rare bulbs were briefly traded like luxury assets, may have been the first financial bubble—and it still shapes markets today.

The world's largest waterfall is in the ocean and is more than three times the height of Angel Falls, the largest waterfall on land.