4+ hour, 13+ min ago  (1847+ words) In July 2022, NASA released Webb's first deep field. It is a scrap of sky about the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. It is packed with galaxies. Light from those galaxies set out as visible and…...

4+ hour, 13+ min ago  (1813+ words) Think of every metal you have ever actually held. A door key. A coin. The spoon in your coffee. The handle of a saucepan, a car door on a cold morning, the little steel pin in a watch strap. Every…...

1+ day, 4+ hour ago  (1873+ words) It is the middle of July. You have been parked in an unshaded lot since morning. Opening the door feels like opening an oven. You drop into the seat, start the engine, and press the AC button. Something happens in…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (711+ words) Animals play dead, a behavior called thanatosis or tonic immobility, mainly to escape hungry predators that lose interest in prey that seems already dead. But some animals also play dead for other reasons: to dodge unwanted mates, to avoid mating,…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (577+ words) Japanese trains are so punctual because of a deep-rooted cultural emphasis on time, advanced control technology, meticulous scheduling, and rigorously trained staff. The famous Tokaido Shinkansen has long averaged delays of well under a minute (around 24 seconds in 2016), among the…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (825+ words) One of the most striking features of octopuses and cephalopods like squids, cuttlefish, and nautilus is that they’re all pros in the art of camouflaging. They can expertly adapt not only the color of their skin, but also the texture....

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (628+ words) Wild animals fear humans more than they fear tigers or lions. We kill prey and large carnivores at far higher rates than any natural predator, so most species now treat us as the top threat. In Africa's Greater Kruger, 95% of…...

2+ day, 4+ hour ago  (610+ words) Picture a train hauling coal across Wyoming. Hundreds of open-top railcars, each heaped with black coal, rolling through country so empty there is no spark, no flame, and no lightning for a hundred miles in any direction. Somewhere around the…...

1+ day, 1+ hour ago  (1565+ words) Picture a drinking straw. Not a normal one, but a ridiculous one: a straw running from the glass on your desk, up through the ceiling and forty stories into the sky. Now hook the world's most powerful vacuum pump to…...

2+ day, 4+ hour ago  (1720+ words) Picture the biggest speaker ever built, with a volume knob that turns all the way around. You start turning. It gets louder. Then louder still. Your ears give up long before the knob does. If you kept turning, would it…...