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. Earth's magnetosphere can generate noises that res...
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Modern elections are designed to look ordinary. Voters enter a booth, mark a choice, deposit a ballot and wait for arithmetic to produce a winner. In medieval and early modern Europe, choosi...
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An email can be perfectly written, legitimately requested and sent from a real company — and still end up in spam. The reason is that modern email delivery is no longer determined only by wh...
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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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Look down at a computer keyboard and you are looking at a museum whose exhibits still work. Some keys preserve decisions made by nineteenth-century typewriter manufacturers. Others carry sym...
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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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Few subjects can turn an ordinary Italian lunch into a tribunal quite as quickly as a traditional recipe. Put cream in carbonara, use pancetta instead of guanciale, add garlic where somebody...
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In a small town in southwestern Nigeria, seeing double is completely normal. Welcome to Igbo-Ora, often called the “Twin Capital of the World,” where almost every family has at least one set...
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Kongthong is a small village nestled in the lush hills of Meghalaya, a northeastern state of India. Home to the Khasi tribe, this village is unlike any other due to its peculiar mode of comm...
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In North Pole, Alaska, the holiday spirit is a year-round affair. Streets have festive names like Santa Claus Lane, and residents often decorate their homes with Christmas lights regardless...
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