Soar above the Jurassic Coast’s 185 million years of geology

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.

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

Here are some tips from Pew Research to help you distinguish between a good poll and an unreliable one.

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

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.'

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

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

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

The final shots of the Civil War were fired in the Arctic over 2 months after the South's surrender.

Explore an interactive forecast of the future of the universe, from the return of Halley's Comet to the last light in the cosmos.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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

Watch what would happen if you literally had all the money in the world.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

'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.

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

Explore (and debunk) the world's most contagious misconceptions—from the 5-second rule to sugar rushes—on this interactive site. Click on each misconception for further evidence.

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

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.