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Science
Pando, a single quaking aspen in central Utah, is one organism made of about 47,000 genetically identical trunks sharing a root system that covers 106 acres and weighs roughly 6,000 tons, making it possibly the heaviest living thing on Earth and, at an estimated 14,000 years old, one of the oldest
A single quaking aspen in central Utah — 47,000 trunks, one root system, roughly 6,000 tonnes — is likely the heaviest living thing on Earth and, at 14,000 to 80,000 years old, among the oldest. Genetics is finally pinning down how it has held together for that long.
Halley’s Comet will return to the inner solar system and reach perihelion on July 28, 2061. Its next return after that won’t come until 2134 — meaning that for many people alive today, 2061 will be their one realistic chance to see the most famous comet in history.
Earth has had eight continents all along — the one missing from every map and school textbook is nearly twice the size of India, 94 percent underwater, and has been quietly sitting beneath the South Pacific for 85 million years
There is a spot in the South Pacific Ocean, 2,688 kilometres from the nearest land in every direction, where more than 263 decommissioned spacecraft lie on the ocean floor — and the closest humans to it are usually astronauts passing 400 kilometres overhead
Everything you have ever touched — every mountain, ocean, star, and galaxy visible through any telescope — is made of the 5% of the universe that physicists can actually account for. The other 95% has no name beyond 'dark', and no confirmed identity at all.
Hundreds of people wrote to a Bristol newspaper in the 1970s about a hum they could feel more than hear — a warehouse fan was blamed, the warehouse closed, the reports continued, and fifty years later the same complaint has been filed across continents by people who have never met
People newly in love show the same serotonin levels as OCD patients — a chemical state that tends to fade within 12 to 18 months, which is exactly when the real question about what love actually is begins
Googling a headache rarely settles anything — a Microsoft study found it escalates common symptoms into fear of rare diseases, and of the quarter of searchers it pushed into a doctor's appointment, most turned out not to need one
In Botswana, conservation biologists spent years painting enormous fake eyes onto the backsides of over two thousand cattle, betting on a simple piece of predator psychology — that a lion who thinks it's been spotted usually abandons the hunt
The claim that a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way comes from a 2016 atlas, and newer studies show why producing an updated global headcount is harder than it sounds
Some babies are born with a mysterious blue-grey mark across their lower back — a birthmark legend has linked to the descendants of Genghis Khan, but science offers a very different explanation for where it comes from.
