This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sierra Domb, founder and CEO of the Visual Snow Initiative, about her journey with visual-snow syndrome – a neurological condition where people see tiny, snow-like flecks in their vision. It has been edited for length and clarity. One day in 2015, as I was driving to […]
Tiny, weirdly adorable creatures called tardigrades are one of the toughest organisms on Earth. Tardigrades, which are perhaps better known as water bears because of their plump bodies, belong to an extremely resilient group of microorganisms that can thrive in harsh environments ill-suited for life. In order to survive, they squeeze water from their bodies […]
In the summer of 1997, scientists recorded a strange, loud noise originating from an area west of Chile’s southern coast. They dubbed it “the bloop”. While searching for underwater volcanoes, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded the infamous loud, ultra-low frequency sound on hydrophones. These underwater microphones the US Navy originally developed […]
In December 2010, a 76-year-old man burned to death on his living room floor in Ireland. Nearly a year later, a coroner officially ruled that he’d died of a peculiar phenomenon, the Irish Independent reported – spontaneous human combustion. This phenomenon, as it has been understood over the centuries, involves a body suddenly bursting into […]
Scientists have made a “breakthrough” in their quest to harness nuclear fusion. The US Department of Energy officially announced the milestone in fusion energy research on Tuesday. For the first time, researchers created a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than they put into it. The experiment, conducted on December 5 at Lawrence Livermore […]
In May, NASA scientists said the Voyager 1 spacecraft was sending back inaccurate data from its attitude-control system [AACS]. In order to find a fix, engineers dug through decades-old manuals. The Voyager team solved the mysterious glitch in late August, NASA officials wrote in an update. Turns out, the spacecraft was beaming information using a […]
Many children grow up gazing up at the night sky, dreaming of becoming astronauts who boldly go to the Moon – and beyond. But in order to get that elusive job, would-be astronauts must make it through a competitive selection process. For NASA’s 2021 class of astronauts, the space agency said it chose just 10 […]
At the end of October, a Mississippi resident made a rare discovery along the drought-stricken Mississippi River – a fossilized jawbone from an American lion that roamed the area roughly 11,000 years ago, according to McClatchy News. It’s only the fourth fossil of the ancient American lion found in Mississippi, according to the news outlet. […]
In 1937, legendary aerial photographer and cartographer Bradford Washburn abandoned hundreds of pounds of camera gear, surveying equipment, and supplies when he ran into bad weather while exploring Canada’s frigid Yukon region. In August, 85 years later, a team of scientists and professional mountain explorers discovered the long-lost historic cache of gear buried in the […]