Science
Discover facts about science. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Science
Entropy strictly demands increasing systemic disorder
The second law of thermodynamics insists that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. This is the sole mathematical reason a…
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Gravity pulls all falling objects at identical rates
It seems incredibly offensive to common sense, but a bowling ball and a feather drop at the exact same rate in a pure vacuum. Gravity does not care how…
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Neptune gives off more heat than it gets from the Sun
Despite lingering in the darkest, freezing depths of our solar neighborhood, this blue giant secretly hoards thermal energy. It actively pumps out more than…
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This dinosaur may have used its crest like a trombone
This bizarre herbivore walked around with a massive, hollow bone tube completely jutting out the back of its skull. Paleontologists suspect it acted exactly…
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Herschel found infrared light using a glass prism
William Herschel was just trying to measure the varying temperatures of different colored light rays using completely standard thermometers. He noticed the…
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Prana flows through every living entity constantly
This invisible life force is said to animate the entire universe, flowing through the air and entering your system seamlessly. It is a beautiful concept that…
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Twin primes are prime numbers that are separated by two
Numbers like eleven and thirteen, or forty-one and forty-three, sit agonizingly close to each other, separated only by a single even number. The Twin Prime…
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When the sun unleashes millions of bomb blasts worth of energy
The sun frequently throws tantrums that could theoretically vaporize us all. A coronal mass ejection, or solar flare, happens when twisted magnetic field…
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The nebula colder than empty space
Empty space isn't even the coldest thing out there. Expanding gas from a dying star in this particular nebula is expanding so aggressively that it actually…
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Diamond is an astonishingly good heat conductor
While people obsess over its shiny appearance, diamond hides a vastly more impressive superpower in plain sight. Its tightly interlocked crystalline carbon…
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Continental crusts remain vastly thicker than basalt beds
Not all bedrock is created equal. The landmasses we stand on are buoyant, thick accumulations of granite that refuse to sink, while the thin, incredibly dense…
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Why raw apples can trigger hay fever symptoms
Your immune cells are terrible at identifying shapes. The proteins in certain raw fruits look so structurally similar to birch tree pollen that biting an…
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Metamorphic rocks require underground stress
Take a perfectly good rock, bury it deep underground, and subject it to horrific heat and crushing pressure until it completely changes its identity. That is…
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Sound steadily travels through the solid crust of Earth
Instead of bothering with the open sky, extreme low-frequency acoustic vibrations actively prefer to travel entirely through solid subterranean rock. These…
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Perfect numbers strictly equal their divisors combined
A perfect number is an integer that is the exact sum of its positive divisors, excluding itself. Six equals one plus two plus three. They are exceptionally…
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The new element hiding inside raw platinum
William Hyde Wollaston dissolved raw platinum ore in intense acid and noticed a strange secondary metal precipitating out of the murky solution. Instead of…
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Why the metric system was created
Sick of a fragmented system where every medieval town had a different sized cup, revolutionaries created a standardized grid of tens to govern measurements.…
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Lemaitre proposed the universe was constantly expanding
Georges Lemaitre looked at celestial equations and boldly claimed the entirety of space was aggressively stretching outward from a single dense point. At…
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Mantle rock behaves like an extremely highly viscous plastic
Forget your grade-school diagrams showing a hollow Earth filled with sloshing liquid fire. The mantle is overwhelmingly composed of solid rock. However, under…
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Gauss tracked Ceres using the method of least squares
When astronomers completely lost track of a newly spotted dwarf planet, Carl Friedrich Gauss smugly stepped in to locate it. He invented a massive statistical…
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Cast shadows strictly feature distinct colored blurry edges
Shadows do not actually cut perfectly stark, cleanly black lines across a brightly lit surface. Due to the completely unavoidable bending of light…
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Your fridge won't stop Listeria
Your fridge is supposed to slow down microbial life, but listeria just views the deli drawer as a refreshing winter retreat. Unlike most foodborne pathogens,…
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The probability puzzle hiding in two matchboxes
Banach's Matchbox Problem is a delightful exercise in probability ruining your day. If a mathematician randomly pulls matches from two equally filled boxes in…
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Earth's core holds an astonishing amount of gold
The Earth is secretly hoarding unprecedented levels of planetary bling. During our world's molten formation, heavy precious metals sank straight to the…
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