How freeze-drying leaves food with less than 4% of its original water content

George Lucas used Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey,' a narrative structure that encompasses the common characteristics of multiple cultures' mythologies, to revise 'Star Wars.'

There are up to 100 trillion microbes in the gut, and maintaining the relative balance in this ecosystem is important for our health.

Experience a century of America's healthcare advances with this medical visualization, tracing a sampling of healthcare innovations from head to toe.

Explore how the most commonly used words in the English language have changed from the 1950s to 2023.

Humans tend to imagine aliens as humanlike, but that's probably unlikely. Three different hypothetical planets show how aliens' bodies could take many forms.

As part of the up to 15 pounds of seafood they consume daily, sea otters eat urchins that feed on kelp forests—sources of shelter and food to over 800 species—thereby making the marine mammal a keystone species.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Watch Bruce Springsteen's 1985 performance of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land,' which he calls 'the greatest song ever written about America.'

Sea stars are invertebrates—they lack a backbone—and while most exhibit pentametric radial symmetry due to having five arms radiating from a central disk, some can possess more than 40.

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.

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.

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.

Humans may have as many as 100,000 to 150,000 individual hairs on our scalps, growing at a rate of roughly 1 centimeter per month.

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

Listen to audio clips from Hoover, a harbor seal named after its insatiable appetite, who learned to say English phrases such as 'hello there' and 'come over here.'

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.

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

On planets in systems with two stars, such as the fictional Tatooine from 'Star Wars,' observers would see overlapping rainbows and double rainbows.

Rapid intensification is the increase in a hurricane's sustained wind speed by at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours, which can strengthen it by up to two categories.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Fecal transplants can help treat infections by transplanting healthy gut bacteria from a donor into a patient's gastrointestinal tract using samples of human waste, which are turned into a liquid mixture and often delivered via a colonoscopy procedure.

Explore how temperatures compare to historical averages in cities worldwide with this interactive global monitor.

Watch the many different civilizations around the Mediterranean shift power from the year 2500 BCE to 0 BCE in this animated map.

Joan Didion interviewed The Grateful Dead in 1967, before they became music icons.

Examine this captivating animation 'building' a human—illustrating the roughly 40 weeks of fetal development.

This interactive website features nearly 40,000 photos from Wikipedia for you to create visual mosaics with.

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.

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.

Watch President John F. Kennedy's speech on going to the moon

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

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.

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

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.

Play the role of a student as you try to navigate college and remain debt-free.

Explore the 2025 Uber Lost & Found Index to find out the weirdest items that passengers left behind in Ubers last year, from ten live lobsters to a mannequin head with human hair.

Robert Smalls escaped slavery by piloting a stolen Confederate ship to freedom, then became an influential Black political leader during Reconstruction.

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.

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.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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.