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The distant volcanic island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is filled with unanswered questions – but few are more mysterious than its unique writing system that’s never been deciphered.  Advertisement Located around 3,600 kilometers (2,237 miles) off the coast of Chile in eastern Polynesia, Rapa Nui is one of the world’s most […]

Global Positioning System (GPS) is widespread these days, helping you navigate to your destination, and also revealing when runners may have cheated in marathons by using a car. Advertisement Though it requires you to be able to launch many satellites into space, the idea behind GPS is actually pretty simple, at least mathematically. Orbiting 20,200 […]

America’s longest-serving active rocket is about to retire – and today, it is flying the last national security mission. The payload is classified. USSF-51 is a United States Space Force mission, and liftoff will occur from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The rocket is owned by United Launch Alliance […]

If you stumbled across this sight after staggering through the desert for days, you’d assume you were seeing a mirage or a vision of dehydrated delirium. Rest assured, this surreal spectacle is very much real (and not AI-generated either). Advertisement The Guelta d’Archei is an ancient watering hole located in the depths of the Sahara […]

Time travel into the future is not only possible, it is practically unstoppable. You may try traveling at close to the speed of light, or parking yourself near a giant gravitational well – but no matter what you try, your clock will keep ticking ever onward, no matter how slowly someone from the outside observes […]

If you’ve ever been out walking and seen a metallic, scaly tree trunk covered in coins, you’ve likely seen a wish tree. This product of folklore is thought to have been practiced for hundreds of years, granting wishes and “curing” physical ailments with each hammering of a coin into the trunk of a tree. A […]

The way you look may be determined by the name your parents gave you at birth, new research has revealed. After conducting a number of experiments involving adults, children, and artificial intelligence, the study authors found that people’s faces tend to evolve throughout their lifetime in order to suit their names. Advertisement “Children do not […]

The internet loves a goat, whether they’re craving that mineral or screaming to Taylor Swift. There’s one breed, however, that’s repeatedly found viral fame not because of its salt-seeking escapades or musical abilities, but because, well, it’s just plain bizarre-looking. Advertisement What is this unusual creature that one TikTok user described as “if you typed […]

When one thinks of deadly chemicals, arsenic, cyanide, and strychnine often come top of the list – but what if we told you there are several chemicals at least a hundred times deadlier, and the one considered most lethal of all gets injected into nearly 3 million people every year? Advertisement The toxicity of substances […]

At some point on a long drive, you or a persistent child have probably wondered what the black dots at the top of your windscreen are for.  Advertisement They appear to be on most vehicles but, like indicators, almost nobody knows what they are for. You might guess that the black “frit” stretching across the […]

Sapphires, like many precious gemstones, are formed in the bowels of Earth’s crust, cooked up by immense pressure and intense heat. However, the exact recipe for the stunning blue crystals has previously escaped scientists. Advertisement The main ingredient in sapphires is a form of aluminum oxide (corundum) along with a cocktail of trace elements including […]

The gamma-ray burst (GRB) known as the Brightest Of All Time (BOAT) had an emission line in its afterglow, the first time one has been detected with confidence in any GRB. The astronomers who discovered the line suspect it is the product of matter and antimatter particles annihilating each other in the aftermath of the […]

If you thought humans were the only ones capable of getting creative in the baby-making process, think again. In the forests of India’s Andaman Islands, there’s a small species of frog with a unique breeding behavior that involves them being upside-down. Advertisement The frog in question is Charles Darwin’s frog (Minervarya charlesdarwini), named after the […]

Rio Lady is a whale shark (Rhincodon typus) and a swimming superstar. By following her movements with different trackers for almost two decades, including a record-breaking four-year streak, scientists have learned a lot about whale sharks and their habits. Advertisement For such big fish – Rio Lady is nearly 8 meters (26 feet) long – […]

Antarctica might conjure up images of snow-capped peaks and intrepid explorers, but against these romanticized views of one of Earth’s harshest environments are the species that have to survive there. While seals and penguins might be more well-known, what about the largest land creature on the continent? It’s time to meet the Antarctic midge (Belgica […]

Somewhere in the savannah, a gazelle is born. A lick from mom and an uncertain wobble, and she is ready to run. Somewhere on a sandy beach, a little turtle hatches. It sits with its siblings under the sand, until, suddenly, they run as a group to the surface and straight into the sea. Have […]

Millions of people saw the spectacular aurorae in May, when multiple coronal mass ejections hit our planet in the largest geomagnetic storm in decades. Tonight it looks like we might have a comparable spectacle, so if you missed that one you’ve got a chance to see it again. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center has […]

A team of astronomers has attempted to explain an unusually high-speed comet, finding that it was likely sent on its hyperbolic trajectory following a close encounter with Saturn in 2022. Advertisement On June 14, 2024, Comet A117uUD was first spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). Over the next month, astronomers made 145 […]

Why do people cheat? Psychologists reckon they have a good handle on this question when it comes to men, but for women the picture is less clear. A new study surveyed people from 19 countries to explore this question, but there were no simple answers to be found. Advertisement Being cheated on can be among […]

A 170-year-old shipwreck overflowing with Europe’s finest champagne and mineral water has been found off the coast of Sweden. Advertisement Around 100 bottles of the bubbling booty were discovered earlier this month by the Baltictech diving group just 37 kilometers (20 nautical miles) south of the Swedish island of Öland in the Baltic Sea.  “The […]