Science & Technology

The death of his wife may have inspired Samuel Morse to invent the telegraph, which uses an electromagnet to quickly send messages over long distances.

Described as the most beautiful equation in mathematics, Euler's identity combines five unrelated but fundamental constants into one relationship.

Microplastics have entered human food chains through carrots, wheat, and other foodstuffs grown on farmland fertilized with sewage sludge.

As many as 500 million smart devices worldwide come preinstalled with malware that lets strangers use a person's internet connection.

Check out a 90-second guide to spotting AI-generated videos and the AI detection tools used by journalists.

Earth's rotation rate constantly changes, which drove the need for leap seconds to synchronize a solar day with timekeeping tools.

Radiation can create green diamonds, while red diamonds result from structural imperfections, despite being among the most valued.

The world's largest algal bloom spans from the Caribbean to West Africa.

The world's oldest isolated water is about 1.6 billion years old and has a musty, sulfuric odor.

Unlike most metals, gold is yellowish rather than silver because fast-moving electrons reduce the size of its atoms and alter how they absorb light.

Egg yolks and carrots have the same pigments that contribute to the yellow and orange colors of fall foliage.

Lining up every microbe on Earth would stretch to about 105,000 light-years—roughly the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy.

White dwarfs solidify into a diamond-like crystal from the inside out as they cool, according to research and observations.

The world's longest-running evolution experiment has tracked genetic changes in E. coli across more than 74,000 generations since 1988.

You can sharpen your vision by looking through a pinhole—the equivalent of narrowing a camera's aperture to reduce blurriness.

Dividing by zero is impossible because a potential quotient would create fundamental contradictions, such as 0 = 1.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can perform sustained backward flight.

Female Komodo dragons can have virgin births, in which unfertilized eggs only produce male hatchlings.

Nicknamed 'corpse crystals,' vivianite can grow on dead bodies if phosphate from decomposing remains combines with iron and water.

In space, fire produces spherical flames rather than the rising ones seen on Earth.

Listen to a reconstruction of the sound of the Big Bang—the first sound of the universe.

Molecules have mirrored versions with distinct properties—a discovery made while analyzing crystals formed during wine production.

The Apollo 11 mission was saved minutes before the moon landing by software developed by Margaret Hamilton—NASA's first software engineer.

Every organism on Earth evolved from a single cell—the last universal common ancestor—which lived about 4.2 billion years ago, research suggests.

Jupiter was twice its current size when it formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Deep divers would feel drunk underwater if their air supply did not include helium.

GPS satellites would become significantly inaccurate within hours if they didn't recalibrate according to Einstein's theories of relativity.

The dark web makes up about 0.01% of the data on the internet and requires specialized software to access.

Explore an interactive database of critical minerals and their uses in clean-energy technologies.

Black holes have locked away about 1% of all the matter in the universe, according to research.

You can measure the speed of light with a microwave oven and chocolate, cheese, or other uniformly thick foods.

If the Earth stopped spinning, about 85% of the world's population would experience supersonic winds.

Watch a time-lapse of the 120-day journey of a pumpkin seed growing into an adult fruit.

Electrogenic animals generate their own electricity by changing the pattern of electrical charges in disc-shaped cells called electrocytes.

'Hacking' was not associated with manipulating technology in creative ways until a 1955 meeting of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club.

A full-ring, ultraviolet view of the Northern Lights was captured for the first time in almost two decades by the European-Chinese Smile mission in 2026.

Run your own particle physics lab in a clicker game made at CERN, turning collision data into discoveries, reputation, and funding.

See what the sun looks like in different wavelengths of light, each revealing features the others can't show.

Tardigrades can survive up to 3,000 times more radiation than humans thanks to Dsup—a damage-suppression protein.

Explore an interactive map of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis from 2150 BCE to the present.

The internet is not what you see when navigating online—that's the World Wide Web, which is supported by hardware called the internet.

Crude oil can be sweet, sour, heavy, or light depending on its density and chemical composition.

About 50 billion to 70 billion cells intentionally die in the average adult human body every day.

Bill Nye accidentally became 'the Science Guy' when filling the time left by a canceled guest on a sketch comedy show.

Synthetic pheromones may protect coral reefs by luring their sea star predators to divers, who can cull them in bulk instead of one by one.

Explore the parts inside a wind turbine, from the gearbox and generator to the yaw drive that turns it to face the wind.

The 'dirty side' of a hurricane is where tornadoes, storm surges, and flooding risks are greatest.

See what space trash is passing overhead at your location with a real-time map of satellites and debris circling in low Earth orbit.

Auroras produce crackling, popping, and rustling sounds, according to anecdotal reports from people in Arctic regions, though scientists have dismissed these claims.

Some sharks can hear underwater sounds up to 74 meters (243 feet) away and identify the direction of the source.