For as long as most of us can remember, we’ve been told that the magic number for a healthy night’s rest is eight hours. Get less than that, and you’re officially “sleep-deprived.” Get more, and you’re supposedly “oversleeping.” Many people…
Black holes have always carried an air of mystery, often imagined as cosmic vacuum cleaners that swallow everything in sight. But the reality is far more complex—and far stranger. At the center of the galaxy M87, located about 55 million…
Quantum computing is one of those futuristic ideas that sounds like it belongs in a science fiction novel. Instead of being powered by ordinary bits — the 1s and 0s inside your phone or laptop — quantum computers use strange…
Every generation has its own set of household treasures that, in hindsight, feel like miniature time capsules. Baby boomers had wood-paneled television sets, vinyl records, and rotary phones. Gen X had cassette tapes, beanbag chairs, and endless hours spent at…
When people hear the word evolution, they usually picture ancient apes slowly turning into modern humans, or the slow crawl of DNA mutating over thousands of years. But according to a new theory by researchers at the University of Maine,…
The ground beneath your feet might not have always belonged to this Earth. At least, not the Earth we know today. According to a growing number of scientists, our planet’s early years were far from peaceful. About 4.5 billion years…
Radiation is one of those invisible forces that sounds straight out of a science fiction novel—sometimes lifesaving, sometimes terrifying. In the right hands, it’s used to zap away cancer cells. In the wrong situation, it can destroy living tissue, cause…
In the rainforests of the Congo, bonobos are doing something surprising: they’re not just making random calls, but combining sounds in ways that resemble sentences. One sound might mean “look at me”, another “let’s do this”, and together they become…
For centuries, the dodo has been the poster child for extinction—a big, flightless bird that humans wiped out within a few decades of discovering it. Sailors who landed on the island of Mauritius in the 1600s described it as a…
If you thought our solar system’s eight planets were all the universe had to offer, NASA has some news for you: we’ve officially crossed the 6,000 mark in confirmed exoplanets—that’s 6,000 planets orbiting stars beyond our Sun. What’s even wilder?…
