On February 10, 2009, a working Iridium satellite and a derelict Russian Cosmos bird collided at 11.7 km/s over Siberia—the first accidental intact-satellite smashup—and seeded thousands of debris fragments still tracked today.
Bite a Wint-O-Green Life Saver in the dark and it flashes blue. Meet triboluminescence: light from crushing crystals, from Ute quartz rattles to sticky tape that emits X-rays in a vacuum.
On December 6, 1917, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc exploded in Halifax Harbour after colliding with the Imo — killing nearly 2,000, blinding hundreds with shattered glass, and forging a lasting bond with Boston.
Lake Kivu holds enough dissolved gas to threaten two million people. Here is how it compares with Lake Nyos, what the 2021 Nyiragongo eruption revealed, and how Rwanda turned the lake’s methane into electricity.
Stars, hexagons and diamonds on three balance scales. How many diamonds balance scale C?
We compared six greener cleaners and castile soaps, from a $10 concentrate that makes 16 gallons to a gadget that turns salt and vinegar into a registered disinfectant.
Young women painted luminous watch dials with radium, tipped their brushes on their lips, and glowed on the walk home. Their fight exposed a deadly industrial lie and helped invent modern radiation safety limits.
In the 1960s, a Yale neuroscientist stepped into a Spanish bullring and stopped a charging bull with a radio signal to its brain. The story of José Delgado and his stimoceiver, and what it foreshadowed.
In 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter flew too close to Mars and was lost because one piece of software used pounds and another expected newtons. Here is how a unit mix-up doomed a spacecraft, and nearly downed a jetliner.
Three balance scales, three shapes, and one empty pan. How many circles balance scale C?
NASA’s final call for commercial space stations is out, with bids due Dec. 8, 2026. What NASA is buying, and how Axiom, Vast, Starlab, Orbital Reef and others compare.
Messenger RNA was discovered in 1961 and spent decades as a molecule nobody wanted. Here is how fat bubbles, a stubborn biochemist, a photocopier meeting and a clue from transfer RNA turned it into the fastest vaccine ever made.
Six indoor CO2 and air quality monitors compared: the accurate Aranet4, a radon-sensing Airthings, a HomeKit Qingping with PM2.5, a smart Govee, a $43 Temtop, and a no-app Inkbird.
In 1972 a French lab found uranium from a Gabon mine was short on uranium-235. The reason: about two billion years ago, the ore had run its own nuclear chain reactions, pulsing on and off like a geyser for hundreds of thousands of years. Here is how nature built a reactor, and what it still teaches scientists.
In 1958 a Swedish engineer got the first fully implanted pacemaker. It failed in three hours, and he went on to use 26 of them. Here is how the pacemaker went from a homemade epoxy disc to a capsule inside the heart.
In July 1962 the United States exploded a hydrogen bomb 250 miles above the Pacific. It lit up the sky over Hawaii, knocked out streetlights 900 miles away, and created a radiation belt that helped kill satellites, including Telstar. Here is what happened and why it still matters.
A dead fish once seemed to read human emotions in a brain scanner. Here is how functional MRI actually works, why the salmon lit up, and what brain scans can and can’t tell us.
Six compact binoculars for concerts, theater, sports, and sightseeing, compared: a pocket Nikon, a close-focusing Pentax, a wide-view arena pick, a premium Zeiss, a $60 budget pair, and our all-around favorite.
On June 30, 1908, something from space exploded over a remote Siberian forest and flattened trees across 830 square miles, yet left no crater. Here is what scientists found, what they still argue about, and how Tunguska shapes planetary defense today.
Weightlessness strips the load from astronauts’ skeletons, and their hips and spines thin fast. Here is why, how space crews fight back with heavy lifting, treadmills, and drugs, and why Mars raises the stakes.
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