The evolution of spacesuit design

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

Explore an interactive timeline of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history to visualize shifting landmasses and oceans, view the locations of significant asteroid impacts, and learn about major geological and biological events.

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

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

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

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.

Abraham Lincoln had to sneak into Washington, DC, in disguise for his 1861 inauguration after a detective uncovered a plot to assassinate him in Baltimore.

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.'

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

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

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

Explore the history of American restaurants through an archive of menus dating back to the early 1800s.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 collapse of gas bubbles in the joint synovial fluid causes 'cracking' knuckles.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.