Science
June 2026
Every article published in June 2026. 837 articles · Back to full archive
Mind & Meaning
The first fax machine was invented in 1843 — more than thirty years before the telephone — which means that for a 22-year window in the mid-1800s, a Japanese samurai could have theoretically sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln, since the samurai class was not formally abolished until 1867 and Lincoln died in 1865
Mind & Meaning
In 1938, Harvard researchers began following a group of young men to learn what makes a good life. Almost nine decades on, the strongest finding in their data is not wealth or achievement, but something quieter.
Mind & Meaning
Almost all the gold on Earth — every wedding ring, every coin, every gram in every bank vault — was forged in the collision of dead stars billions of years ago, in events so violent that a single one can produce hundreds of Earth-masses of gold, and the heavy elements were then scattered across the galaxy before our sun was even born
Science
Earth has gone through five mass extinction events in its history, each wiping out the majority of life on the planet — and many biologists argue we are currently in the early stages of the sixth, caused not by an asteroid or a volcanic eruption but by a single species changing the planet's atmosphere, oceans, and ecosystems faster than other species can adapt
Materials
Just six grams of gold coat an Olympic "gold" medal, which is otherwise mostly silver — the last solid-gold medals were handed out at the 1912 Stockholm Games
Science
The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs did not just leave a crater, it turned the sky into a weapon, and the worst damage may have come after the impact itself was already over
Science
The Amazon’s ancient drainage system once ran the other way, carrying water and sediment westward across South America before the rise of the Andes, shifting land levels, and massive sediment buildup helped turn it into the east-flowing river we know today.
Constellations
Almost everyone assumes Venus is our nearest neighbour, but averaged across its orbit the planet closest to Earth is actually Mercury
Constellations
Much of what we know about the scale of the universe rests on a method worked out by a woman employed as a human computer at Harvard for a few cents an hour
Psychology
The conversation women aren't having with their doctors about menopause and memory loss isn't just overdue — it may be one of the most important health decisions of their fifties
Science
The light from the Andromeda Galaxy — the most distant object visible to the naked human eye — left its source about 2.5 million years ago, which means when you look at it on a clear night, you are seeing light that began its journey to Earth around the time the first members of our genus, Homo, were learning to use stone tools
Psychology
Laughter activates many of the same brain reward circuits as food and sex, and a 2025 study finds it measurably lowers cortisol and may restructure how the developing brain builds resilience to stress
Mind & Meaning
Tomatoes were considered poisonous in much of Europe for nearly two centuries after they were introduced from the Americas — not because of anything dangerous in the fruit itself, but because the plant belongs to the same botanical family as deadly nightshade, with leaves and stems that really do contain toxic alkaloids, and the misunderstanding kept the fruit out of European cuisine until the late 1700s
Mind & Meaning
Saudi Arabia imports sand — despite being a country dominated by desert, the sand of the Arabian Peninsula is too smooth and round for use in construction concrete, because thousands of years of wind erosion have polished the grains to a shape that does not bond well with cement, and most construction sand must be imported from countries like Australia
Mind & Meaning