Put a slice of aged cheddar in a hot pan and things can become unpredictable. It may soften beautifully, but push the temperature too far and orange oil can pool around clumps of tightening protein. Put a familiar slice of American cheese o...
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The James Webb Space Telescope is often introduced through spectacular pictures: glowing stellar nurseries, delicate shells of gas, galaxies from the young universe and strange worlds orbiti...
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Artificial intelligence has become one of those phrases that seems to describe everything at once. It can mean the system that recommends a song, the software that detects a suspicious bank...
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Taste a drop of seawater and the answer seems obvious: the ocean contains salt. The more interesting question is how it got there. There are no gigantic salt deposits steadily dissolving int...
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Few foods carry a national story as neatly as Pizza Margherita. Red tomato, white mozzarella and green basil seem to reproduce the Italian flag on a circle of dough. According to the story r...
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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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Technology is supposed to age quickly. Phones become obsolete, startups disappear, frameworks fall out of fashion and yesterday's revolutionary software becomes tomorrow's migration problem....
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Ice presents a small everyday mystery. A cold pavement can be dangerously slippery even when the air temperature is far below freezing, while many other crystalline solids are perfectly easy...
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Astronomy has a reputation for expensive telescopes, complicated star charts and distant objects visible only through professional instruments. Yet some of the sky's most memorable events re...
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There is a peculiar kind of certainty that appears around traditional food. A grandmother made a dish one way, a restaurant in its supposed birthplace serves it another, and suddenly one ver...
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