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 into every sea, and most rivers taste fresh even thou...
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Few animal sounds are as instantly recognizable as a cat’s purr. A hand reaches toward a warm patch of fur, the cat closes its eyes, and a low vibration begins somewhere inside its body. To...
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When George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, died in Cairo on April 5, 1923, the timing was almost too perfect for a sensational story. Only months earlier he had stood with archaeologist...
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Few astronomical discoveries have produced a nickname as irresistible as the “diamond planet.” About 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer, 55 Cancri e is a super-Earth nearly twic...
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Imagine putting the entire Solar System on a cosmic scale: the eight planets, every known moon, the asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, dust and the enormous Sun. The result would be absurdly...
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In the Chihuahuan Desert of northern Mexico, where Durango, Chihuahua and Coahuila approach one another across an immense dry basin, a patch of landscape has acquired one of the strangest re...
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The first message sent across the network that would become a crucial ancestor of the modern Internet was not profound, poetic or even complete. It consisted of two lowercase letters: lo.Tha...
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Stones that float on water? Sounds impossible—unless you’re in Rameswaram, India. Here, ancient stones defy gravity, floating on the surface like driftwood. Linked to one of Hinduism’s gr...
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If We Went to the Moon in 1969, Why Can’t We Go Now? It’s a fair question: if NASA sent astronauts to the Moon in 1969—over 50 years ago—why haven’t we gone back, and why does it seem so...
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Did We Really Go to the Moon? It's one of the most iconic moments in human history: on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon and said, “That’s one small step...
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