On April 26th, 1986, the Ukrainian nuclear power plant at Chernobyl found itself quite unexpectedly exploding. With the irradiated area continuing to bring curious visitors from around the world, the question must be asked: how long will it take for it to shed its pesky radioactivity?
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Some things go together like peanut butter and chocolate, like Johnny Depp and a certain level of cultural uneasiness, or turtles and their shells. Unless you're a hunter playing on easy mode, or a startling cartoon character, odds are that you've never seen a turtle outside of its shell. Why?
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Passenger pigeons were once perhaps the most multitudinous avians on the planet, numbering as many as 5 billion in their prime. But in 1914, the last known member of the species died at 29 years old in the care of the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha. Batman would have been furious.
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If there's one thing NASA loves, it's driving golf carts around the surface of Mars. Although Elon Musk may be worried that humans won't colonize the red planet in his lifetime, NASA's InSight lander recently beamed back some unexpected findings about the red planet's magnetic fields.
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Human beings kill approximately 100 million sharks a year, per The New York Times Magazine. On the other hand, unprovoked shark attacks killed just five human beings in 2017. So clearly the sharks have more to worry about than we do. But here's how you can survive a shark attack if it happens.
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It's easy to picture piranhas as hungry teeth with fish attached. In fact, 'piranha' translates to "tooth fish" in the language of Brazil's Tupi people. Paired with a prominent underbite, those notorious chompers make for a menacingly serrated smile.
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As COVID-19 continues its tear through the general public, killing hundreds and throwing the international economy into disarray, the CDC offers new advice seemingly on a daily basis. Now they're honing on beards.
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Move over Doctor Moreau, scientists at the Casey Eye Institute are honing in on your territory, only instead of creating hideous mutants they're trying to cure blindness.
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Here's the truth about Michelle Kunimoto, the University of British Columbia student who recently discovered 17 new planets with nothing but her wit, her will, and publicly available NASA internet archives.
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Pretty much everyone would love to live a good, long life. However, the whole "not dying until you're really old" thing is a bit of a two-edged sword: Unless your brain manages to keep up with the rest of your body, your golden years probably won't be quite as cozy as you'd hope.
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Through the combined efforts of researchers at Rice University, Biola University, and the Texas A&M Health Science Center, the human race now possesses tiny, molecule-sized drills capable of destroying not just diseased cells, but entire multicellular microorganisms.
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Of the arachnids who do pose a real risk to humans few have garnered as much media attention as the Brazilian wandering spider, sometimes referred to as the banana spider.
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When you think of the word "obedient", all manner of examples come to mind. But it's a safe bet that none of those examples include the word "cat." But take heart, because there are indeed some breeds of cat that can be considered obedient. Even trainable.
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Science rules. Perhaps nobody knows this better than William Sanford Nye, born in Washington, D.C. in 1955, and known to generations of kids — literally — as the Science Guy.
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In a development sure to alarm both Sam Neill and Chris Pratt, researchers announced the recent discovery of what they believe to be actual dinosaur DNA. So, you know, start booking your theme park tickets to the Isla Sorna now.
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There's a new Chinese phenomenon visible from space, and it has nothing to do with keeping the rampaging Mongol horde at bay. The effects of the novel Wuhan coronavirus--the germ responsible for the budding COVID-19 pandemic -- were picked up by a NASA satellite monitoring air pollution over China.
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As the world's population of bees continues its series of terrible, horrible, no good, bad days, a study has now revealed that pesticide use permanently damages the brains of baby pollinators, irrevocably impeding their ability to learn and function. That's the bad news. There's good news later.
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Grizzly bears are every bit as grisly as they sound. Ruthless, lethal, and unrelenting, they can chase you at breakneck speed in the sense that they will speedily break your neck after they chase you.
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It's surprisingly easy to spend most of your waking hours in front of a screen. So what is all this time staring into the digital abyss really doing to our health?
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Live Science reports that during a February 25, 2020 news conference, the CDC ominously acknowledged that the possibility of coronavirus spreading throughout the U.S. wasn't a matter of "if" but "when." Since then, "when" has become now. And it may cost us in more ways than one.
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It's the ultimate handwavey, science fiction trope. Engage the warp drive and you can move people through time and space faster than you can pronounce intergalactic mycelium network. And it's looking more possible than ever.
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Mosquitos: they're nature's living pub darts. They're syringes that can have babies. They are, to put it bluntly, just the worst. But there's a natural solution.
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Turns out, scientists don't even have to go into outer space to search for extraterrestrial life. Sometimes outer space just comes to them in the form of meteorites.
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Talk about a microbrew. We've all had a light beer that tastes like pee, but how about pee that tastes like light beer? According to Science Alert, a woman in Pittsburgh, PA has been identified as the first known human to naturally produce ethyl alcohol in their urine.
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Freeman Dyson -- physicist, mathematician, but also something of a philosopher, pondering such topics as the origin of life itself -- died February 28, 2020, at the age of 96.
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Astronomers have spotted a cosmic blast massive enough to make Jerry Bruckheimer blush. The explosion was so big, that researchers are saying it dwarfs every previously observed explosion in size and scale.
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The NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey is credited for spotting a new orbiter during routine NEO observations on February 15th. Kacper Wierzchos of the Catalina Sky Survey tweeted the announcement, "Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3."
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