How lasers have become a go-to in archaeology

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

Semaglutides, which belong to a class of drugs called GLP-1s, are prescribed for weight loss in combination with diet and exercise because they trigger the release of the appetite-suppressing hormone incretin.

There are 'YouTube camps' that teach children how to create content for the video platform.

If the moon were less than one-twelfth its current distance from Earth, the planet's tidal forces would overcome the moon's internal gravity, tearing it apart and forming a ring of debris.

The US has discontinued a variety of different currency denominations over the years—including a $100K bill.

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

Although the moon passes between the sun and Earth each month, its orbit is tilted by five degrees, preventing Earth from experiencing a solar eclipse each month.

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.

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.

Author David Foster Wallace's 'This Is Water' speech provides guidance for adulthood.

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.

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

'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.

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

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

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

'Bibliotherapy' is of increasing interest as a way to improve mental health and help navigate complex life situations—with people immersing themselves in the experiences of fictional characters or nonfiction and self-help books to find relief and gain personal insights.

The animatronic shark from 'Jaws' was a complex machine called 'Bruce.'

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Peek into the love lives of thousands of strangers whom Stanford University researchers have been tracking since 2017 on this interactive page.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Check out some of the best books that can be read in a single day, with titles from Han Kang, Denis Johnson, Muriel Spark, and more.

Explore a collection of famous literary maps, including original images from 'Treasure Island,' 'The Swiss Family Robinson, ' and 'Walden.'

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is "Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula, the subject of the photo, was not credited until 2002 for her role in the famous National Geographic cover, and continued to live in poverty after the photo was taken.

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.'

Computer scientists first started trying to optimize dating using computers in the 1950s.

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

Watch footage from the moments the Titanic wreck was discovered by a joint US-French research team in 1985.

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.'

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.'

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.