Look up on a clear night and the most obvious feature of the universe is not the stars. It is the darkness between them. That darkness seems perfectly ordinary, yet for centuries it posed a surprisingly deep problem. If space contains an en...
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It is one of those questions that sounds almost too simple to deserve a scientific explanation. Look up on a clear afternoon and the sky is blue. Yet that familiar color is the visible resul...
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Near the heart of the Milky Way lies a cloud with a reputation that sounds invented for a science-fiction cocktail menu. Sagittarius B2 contains alcohol. It also contains ethyl formate, an o...
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When Iñupiat hunters and biologists began finding ancient weapon fragments inside bowhead whales harvested in Arctic Alaska, the discoveries posed an extraordinary question: how long had the...
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On October 30, 1961, a Soviet Tu-95 bomber crossed the frozen landscape of Novaya Zemlya carrying an object so large that the aircraft had been specially modified to accommodate it. The bomb...
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Listen to some of NASA's most famous recordings from the outer Solar System and space does not sound silent at all. Jupiter whistles, crackles and roars. Saturn produces eerie rising tones....
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An old tree can carry the shape of an injury long after the branch that caused it has disappeared. A swollen collar may surround the site of a lost limb. Growth rings can bend around the old...
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Ask a modern AI system about a breaking scientific discovery and the answer may arrive with links to a university, a journal and a newspaper. It can feel as though the model has opened the i...
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Your favorite song isn’t just nostalgic — it’s neurological. Hearing music you love triggers a dopamine rush in your brain, similar to eating chocolate or falling in love. It activates memor...
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Hey, so the other night I heard someone talking about a "Pink Moon" and I was totally confused. Is it actually pink? Like, bubblegum pink? It sounded like something out of a fairy tale! O...
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