Science & Technology

Nuclear power relies on chain reactions involving uranium-235, but because the isotope's concentration in natural ores is too low to sustain these reactions, enrichment is needed to produce more highly concentrated fuel.

In 2025, the European Space Agency created the first artificial solar eclipse in space when one spacecraft cast a shadow onto another spacecraft to enable observations of the sun's outermost atmosphere.

With sufficiently sensitive hearing and powerful equipment, if a source of music traveled past someone at twice the speed of sound, they would hear the music backward.

Although an estimated 99.999% of the deep ocean has not been explored, techniques such as sonar have been used to identify the deepest known point in each of Earth's five oceans.

Brown dwarfs are nicknamed 'failed stars' because, while much more massive than planets, they lack sufficient mass to initiate nuclear fusion in their cores and become stars.

Designing the pitches for the FIFA World Cup 2026 took turfgrass scientists about eight years, as they sought to create identical conditions for indoor and outdoor fields across North America at various altitudes and climates.

The Mars Climate Orbiter—a $125M spacecraft designed to study Martian weather and climate—was lost because ground software used imperial units while onboard software used metric units.

Across the animal kingdom, mice are among the least efficient travelers, while the efficiency of human locomotion falls between that of a cow and a horse.

Track active wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters across the US in real-time with this interactive map.

Certain objects are magnetic because their electrons' magnetic moment—an intrinsic quantum property—align within the object in specific patterns.

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.

Airports at high elevations, like Denver International Airport, have longer runways than most airports because airplanes cannot take off or land as quickly in thinner air.

The bullwhip was the first human-made object to break the sound barrier, producing a small sonic boom heard as a crack when flicked quickly.

In 1900, the remains of an Antikythera mechanism—a 2,000-year-old hand-powered model of the solar system and the oldest example of an analog computer—were uncovered in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece.

The history of contact lenses may have begun with Leonardo da Vinci, who developed a concept of vision correction based on placing a substance directly on the eye's surface.

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.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as of 2025, there are over 18,000 endangered animal species worldwide, with the share of fish, insects, mollusks, and reptiles increasing since 2007.

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.

Of the 736 Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and economics awarded through 2023, more than 95% come from the same academic family, having been taught by a lineage of previous winners.

Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon sink on the planet, storing almost twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and all living plants and animals combined.

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.

Dinosaurs ranged from the size of chickens to multistory buildings, with one of the largest, Argentinosaurus, spanning about 39 meters (128 feet) and weighing more than a Boeing 737.

Likened to a car backfiring or a faraway cannon fire, skyquakes have been reported worldwide in Earth's atmosphere without any obvious cause.

Despite the name, infinity mirrors—mirrors that reflect each other—do not produce reflections to infinity because mirrors absorb some of the incoming light with each reflection.

Quicksand—a mixture of sand with clay or silt soaked in water that gives way when enough pressure is applied—is denser than the human body, meaning you may escape it by floating horizontally.

Tennis balls get their bounce from pressurized nitrogen inside vulcanized rubber, made from heating natural rubber with sulfur to create molecular links that harden the material.

By separating light with tools such as prisms, scientists can reveal the presence and composition of celestial matter by identifying color fingerprints unique to specific elements and molecules.

Craters found on the moon and the calculated dates of these impacts, based on rocks returned by the Apollo missions, suggest that Earth was pummeled by asteroids for millions of years—a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

In honor of scientific exploration, all five launched space shuttles were named after ships that traveled the oceans, but a campaign from Star Trek fans led to the shuttle prototype being named Enterprise.

Visualize population densities around the world represented as geographic terrain and how those densities changed from 1900 to 1975 to 2015.

No map of the Earth is perfect because each introduces inaccuracies in the shape, size, or orientation of landmasses and oceans by trying to flatten the planet's curved surface.

During embryonic development, a major signaling protein involved in the development of the central nervous system, limbs, and other body parts is called Sonic Hedgehog, after the Sega video game character.

Earth's magnetic field can trap high-energy charged particles produced by the sun and distant cosmic events in doughnut-shaped rings called Van Allen belts.

Starfish 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.

Since 2019, a free-floating robotic system named Astrobee has helped astronauts with routine tasks on the International Space Station.

American oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp's discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which supported the idea that continents move over time, was initially dismissed as 'girl talk.'

When leap seconds are needed to resynchronize clocks with Earth's rotation, instead of shifting time all at once, technology companies implement a leap smear, which evenly distributes the change over a 24-hour period.

Data suggests the typical horse produces over 12 horsepower—a unit of measurement for the rate of work done that was conceived as a marketing tool to communicate steam engine performance.

A black hole with the mass of the observable universe would be larger than the observable universe, leading some theorists to suggest that we may live inside a black hole.

The term 'scientist' was coined in a 1834 book review by English polymath William Whewell, who needed an alternative to 'man of science' to describe Scottish writer Mary Somerville.

Oxygen is produced in the International Space Station from recycled water, which is split into hydrogen and oxygen gases using an electric current.

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

Nuclear fusion, where the nuclei of two atoms are combined, can produce near-limitless clean energy, but requires extreme conditions to kickstart because of the natural repulsion of atomic nuclei.

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.'

Mount Everest may be considered the tallest mountain on Earth, but the summit of Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo is more than a mile further away from Earth's center than the top of Everest.

In 2026, researchers at the University of Minnesota created the world's first synthetic cell—a cell made from non-living chemical components—that can eat, grow, divide, and compete with other cells for resources.

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.

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.

In 1975, the Soviet Union fired a space cannon as part of testing a defense system that would prevent anyone from approaching and inspecting Soviet military satellites.

The world's first webcam was invented in the early 1990s by scientists at Cambridge Computer Laboratory to monitor a coffee pot for researchers working in different labs on various floors.