They Came to See Komodo Dragons. Some Ended Up Fighting for Their Lives
People travel to Indonesia hoping to get a glimpse of the Komodo dragon. Some have instead found themselves fighting for their lives. One 8-year-old boy was killed,…
The Fermi Paradox: If Aliens Should Be Everywhere, Why Is the Universe Silent?
The universe is unimaginably old, enormous and filled with stars and planets. With hundreds of billions of galaxies and more than 100 billion planets in the Milky…
This Ship Doesn’t Go Around the Ice. It Goes Through It
Imagine a ship pushing through the Arctic, surrounded by ice thick enough to stop ordinary vessels in their tracks. Now add two nuclear reactors, three propellers and…
This Tiny Animal Shrinks Its Brain in Winter. Then Its Nose Gets Bigger
Imagine surviving winter by making your brain smaller while making your nose bigger. That is what researchers found in the long-clawed shrew, a tiny mammal from Hokkaido,…
Astronauts Have Trouble Going to the Bathroom. The Real Problem May Be Much Bigger.
One of the biggest problems facing astronauts on a future trip to Mars may have nothing to do with rockets or radiation. It may begin the moment…
Sunlight Turned This Pacific Island Into a Giant Silver Mirror
From space, this remote Pacific island looked as if someone had poured liquid metal across the ocean. The water around Rennell Island had turned silver. So had…
10 Old Technologies That Make You Wonder: How Did They Think of This?
In 1955, a tiny electric train ran through New York’s Holland Tunnel—not to carry passengers, but to monitor traffic. More than 300 years earlier, someone had built…
Close Your Eyes. That’s Still Not What Blindness Is Like
Close your eyes for a moment. Most people assume that what they are seeing now is similar to blindness: darkness, or perhaps a black field with occasional…
The Giant Machines Behind America’s Greatest Space Achievements
America did not reach space with a single rocket, a single astronaut or a single historic launch. It took decades of engineering, enormous machines, dangerous experiments and…
Does Loneliness Affect Your Memory? What Scientists Actually Know
A forgotten name, a missed appointment or the familiar experience of walking into a room and forgetting why you went there can become more unsettling with age….