What's up in
Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe and our place in it.
In 1961, a young chimpanzee captured in Cameroon and trained at a New Mexico air force base became the first hominin to travel into space and return alive — and the program kept him publicly nameless throughout the mission, as if to avoid the grief of losing a named chimp on national television, only calling him Ham after he came home
In 1919, British astronomer Arthur Eddington sailed to the island of Príncipe to photograph a total solar eclipse, measuring starlight bent by the Sun’s gravity — a result that confirmed a key prediction of Einstein’s general relativity and helped turn him into the most famous scientist in the world.
The geochemist who first measured the true age of the Earth kept finding lead everywhere it shouldn't be in his samples, and the trail led him to a discovery that put him at war with industry for the rest of his career: modern lead exposure was overwhelmingly man-made.
Quote by Bill Nye: "There's nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind."
Most people are solving the wrong equation — the logic behind why some people compound their effort into results while everyone else stays flat is simple, uncomfortable, and almost never talked about
In October 1957, Sputnik 1 crossed the sky every 96 minutes while two 1-watt transmitters on 20.005 and 40.002 megahertz sent a beep that radio amateurs around the world could hear on ordinary shortwave receivers
In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa carried hundreds of tree seeds around the Moon in his personal kit, and the ordinary-looking seedlings that came home were planted in courthouses, schools and parks where many grew for decades with their flight history hidden in small plaques
In April 2016, a mother who had lost two children to the same disease flew to Mexico to try something no one had ever done — and came home with a baby boy carrying DNA from three people, the first child ever born from a science built to spare him his siblings' fate
Adding a banana to a berry smoothie can cancel out roughly 84% of the antioxidants the berries were supposed to deliver — and the reason is the same enzyme that turns bananas brown after they're peeled
A drilling expedition off Nantucket has confirmed a massive freshwater reservoir buried beneath the Atlantic seafloor — stretching from New Jersey to Maine, hypothesized since the 1960s, and holding enough drinkable water to supply New York City for roughly 800 years
