Science
Discover facts about science. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Science
How tiny experiments decide where buttons go
Developers genuinely do not trust their own design intuition, so they rely entirely on massive user experimentation. By serving two slightly different…
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Why blind people gesture while talking
You might assume talking with your hands is purely for the listener's benefit, but it is actually for the speaker. Even people blind since birth passionately…
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The hashtag was proposed before Twitter adopted it
Silicon Valley rarely invents its most iconic features. The ubiquitous symbol for categorizing online complaints was proposed by a random early user trying to…
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Fibonacci sequences are just recursive additions
Starting with zero and one, each new number is the sum of the previous two. It looks like a basic addition drill for toddlers, but it inexplicably shows up in…
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Earthworms have five pairs of hearts
It takes an extraordinary amount of cardiovascular effort to blindly tunnel through dirt all day. Earthworms have five pairs of aortic arches tucked closely…
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Oort cloud contains billions of distant icy cosmic objects
Sitting way out past Pluto is a massive, theoretical spherical shell called the Oort Cloud. It is a cosmic junkyard containing billions of icy, frozen…
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Why lemurs rub toxic millipedes on their fur
Even primates occasionally need to take the edge off. Black lemurs intentionally antagonize toxic millipedes until the creature secretes defensive cyanide…
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Flea babies grow up on dried blood
If you thought having an active flea infestation was bad, just know their babies are raised on a strict diet of parental poop. Adult fleas gorge on host…
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Fibonacci sequence appears in simple recursive formulas
Long before it became a trendy tattoo for art students, this sequence was just a basic arithmetic progression where each number is the sum of the two…
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Mars is covered in the same rust as old bicycles
The majestic Red Planet gets its iconic intimidating hue from the exact same chemical failure that destroys old bicycles. The entirely frozen, barren surface…
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Mars gets snow made of tiny carbon-dioxide cubes
Winter wonderland on Mars looks a lot more like a low-resolution video game. While Earth snow is made of water that freezes into beautiful, six-sided…
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Why Tasmanian devils bite each other at dinner
Dining etiquette simply does not exist for these notoriously cranky marsupials. Whenever a group gathers around a fresh carcass, they engage in loud, vicious…
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Why frozen iguanas fall from Florida trees
Florida is famously haunted by the deeply alarming phenomenon of literally raining reptiles. When temperatures aggressively drop below forty degrees…
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Two AIs have to fool each other to make deepfakes
Synthetic media is generated by forcing two programs to passionately fight. One system constantly tries to forge a realistic image, while the other acts as an…
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Cats may have invented meowing just for humans
Adult felines almost never meow at other cats; they save that high-pitched vocal nonsense entirely for us. Over thousands of years, they realized humans are…
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The southern lights mirror the northern ones
The northern hemisphere usually steals all the glory, but the bottom of the world has an identical neon light show. The aurora australis puts on the exact…
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Foraging ants leave a chemical trail of pheromones to guide their colony directly toward newly discovered food
Ants don't need Google Maps because they rely on a far more aggressive system: chemically yelling at the floor. When a scout ant finds a dropped French fry,…
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Command line interfaces remain popular for raw speed
Graphical buttons are merely training wheels for casual users. System administrators still type arcane text strings into black boxes because rendering visual…
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Pluto insists on destroying your life for growth
Character development is just a polite term for relentless, agonizing transformation. Operating as the great cosmic bulldozer, this distant dwarf planet rules…
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The wasp that turns cockroaches into zombies
The jewel wasp is nature's most diabolical neurosurgeon. When it needs a nursery, it aggressively tackles a cockroach and stabs its stinger directly into the…
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Cuckoo chicks push their nestmates to their deaths
Cuckoos are the ultimate deadbeat parents. A mother cuckoo sneaks her egg into another bird's nest and bolts. When the massive cuckoo chick hatches, it…
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Why artists used toxic cadmium yellow
This heavy metal is notoriously toxic, yet classic painters decided it was an absolute necessity for their beautiful artwork. Cadmium brilliantly produces…
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Most potatoes are genetic clones
When you buy a bag of russets, you are basically buying an army of identical twins. Because potatoes are grown vegetatively from the eyes of other potatoes…
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Jupiter's moon collection tops 90
Jupiter is the ultimate hoarder of the solar system, boasting an absurd collection of over ninety moons ranging from massive icy worlds to completely…
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