Science
Discover facts about science. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Science
A plane can push air without a propeller
The object doesn’t need to blow air out like a rocket. A strong electric field speeds up ions, which bump into ordinary air molecules and set them moving;…
Discover more
Some radio signals echo back 40 seconds later
A radio echo that takes 40 seconds to return has gone far beyond the quick bounce expected from ordinary reflections in the ionosphere. Such a delay would…
Discover more
How 29 reindeer became 6,000, then almost disappeared
Introduced reindeer multiplied on Alaska's St. Matthew Island, where slow-growing lichens initially supplied abundant food. Heavy grazing depleted that…
Discover more
Lightning can leave tree-like marks on your skin
Lightning can damage tiny blood vessels near the skin’s surface, leaving branching marks called Lichtenberg figures. The vessels trace a fern-like pattern…
Discover more
The Titicaca water frog breathes through its baggy skin
Its extensive skin folds provide a large surface for taking oxygen from the water. Push-up-like movements circulate fresh water across that surface when…
Discover more
How blinding bats revealed their secret
A bat doesn’t need to see an obstacle if it can hear the echo of its own call. Sound bounces off nearby objects and returns to the bat, carrying clues about…
Discover more
STACKY FOR IPHONEA bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.
Keep discovering with Stacky. Interesting facts in an app that is always within reach.
Coral reefs remember nuclear fallout
As coral grows, it builds a skeleton from calcium and can take in radioactive strontium-90 because strontium behaves much like calcium. The radioactive…
Discover more
An astronomer thought he had caught the Moon erupting
In 1958, Nikolai Kozyrev recorded an unusual spectrum from the crater Alphonsus and interpreted it as a gas release. His observations became part of a debate…
Discover more
The first capacitor gave its inventor a massive shock
The glass in a Leyden jar kept charge trapped between two metal surfaces, like a battery waiting for a path out. When van Musschenbroek touched the nail, his…
Discover more
The experiment that made electrical resistance vanish
In 1911, cooling mercury to a few degrees above absolute zero revealed a sudden loss of electrical resistance. In a superconducting loop, current can persist…
Discover more
Ynes Mexia began major expeditions in her fifties and collected over 145,000 specimens
Across a thirteen-year botanical career, she traveled widely in the Americas and gathered plants that became lasting research material. Hundreds represented…
Discover more
Log flumes moved timber on flowing water instead of wheels
A flume guided water and logs down from forested slopes, using a channel in place of a road or railway. Forester Viktor Schauberger became known for designs…
Discover more
Hydrogen can make strong steel fail like something brittle
Tiny hydrogen atoms can enter steel and help cracks develop under stress. The metal may lose its ability to stretch and absorb a load before breaking, even…
Discover more
Electricity made dead frogs' muscles move
Luigi Galvani described frog-leg contractions triggered when metal contacted nerves during electrical experiments. The animal did not need to be alive for its…
Discover more
Discovering Earth's crust boundary through quakes
Scientists found the crust-mantle boundary by listening to earthquakes, not by drilling down to it. Some waves sped up in deeper rock and bent along a…
Discover more
Slowing down gravity to prove Newton right
Put two nearly equal weights against each other and their pulls mostly cancel, leaving only a small force to move the system. The weights then accelerate…
Discover more
Watching the Halifax fire put people's eyes in the blast's path
The burning ammunition ship drew onlookers to windows before it exploded in 1917. Shattered glass caused numerous eye injuries, creating an extraordinary…
Discover more
An anatomist made miniature theaters from human remains
Frederik Ruysch arranged preserved specimens into elaborate displays, including small skeletons posed as mourners. Their tiny handkerchiefs were made from…
Discover more
The balloon ride that revealed cosmic radiation
Physicist Victor Hess took radiation detectors high in a balloon, expecting readings to drop as he rose above some of the atmosphere that blocks radiation.…
Discover more
Ocean currents move sideways to the actual wind
Wind pushes the ocean’s surface, but Earth’s rotation turns the moving water. In the idealized Ekman pattern, the combined transport of the upper layer ends…
Discover more
The woman who bottled the greenhouse effect
In the 1850s, Eunice Foote compared gases in cylinders exposed to sunlight and found carbon dioxide became especially warm. She suggested an atmosphere richer…
Discover more
Earthquakes revealed Earth's solid inner core
Scientists expected an earthquake-wave shadow, but some waves reached into it. A solid inner core could explain the detour: waves reflected or bent inside the…
Discover more
How lightning helped create life's building blocks
Miller and Urey sent sparks through gases meant to resemble Earth’s early atmosphere. The electrical jolts helped reactions form amino acids, building blocks…
Discover more
Scientists rotated a light experiment and found the same answer
Michelson and Morley compared light traveling along perpendicular paths, looking for the effect of Earth's motion through a proposed light-carrying aether.…
Discover more