Science — Page 2
Fascinating scientific discoveries
172 facts
Human DNA is so long it could go to the Sun and back hundreds of times.
If we stretched all the DNA from a single human cell, it would be about 2 meters long. Considering the 37 trillion…
The world's oceans contain about 20 million tons of dissolved gold, enough to give every person on Earth 9 pounds.
While the gold is truly there, it is extremely diluted in the vast volume of seawater, making it currently impossible…
Earth's magnetic poles have reversed hundreds of times over the last billion years.
These reversals are caused by changes in the flow of molten iron in the Earth's outer core. The last major reversal…
A vacuum can change the way light travels when subjected to extreme magnetic fields.
An international team used observations of a magnetar, a neutron star with a magnetic field billions of times…
Water can boil and freeze at the same time when it reaches the triple point.
The triple point of water occurs at a specific temperature and pressure, about 0.01 degrees Celsius and 611 pascals…
A modern atomic clock would lose less than a second in 15 billion years.
Atomic clocks use transitions between energy levels of atoms, such as caesium, to measure time with enormous…
In 2025, scientists discovered a material with impossible thermal behaviour in a meteorite.
Inside a meteorite kept for 300 years, researchers found a material that defies traditional physics theories. The…
Astronomers discovered an object that is a mix of black hole and star.
The object, nicknamed a black hole star, emits 100 billion times more energy than any star known to produce by…
Scientists discovered new rules about how planarians regenerate body parts.
Researchers at the Stowers Institute found that planarian stem cells follow precise rules to rebuild a head or an…
The ANKLE1 protein is the first human enzyme capable of detecting physical tension in DNA.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong identified ANKLE1 as the first nuclease in mammals that responds to…
The plutonium-244 found on the ocean floor was produced by underwater nuclear explosions.
Scientists found atoms of plutonium-244 in a crust from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, nearly 5,000 metres deep…
There is a type of ice that can burn, called methane hydrate.
Methane hydrate is a crystalline structure of water that traps methane molecules. It forms under conditions of low…
Mercury is a metal that is in a gaseous state at room temperature.
Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at normal temperature and pressure. It is a dense, toxic element…
The Voyager probes carry a gold-plated copper disc with sounds and images from Earth.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 carry the Golden Record, a message for possible extraterrestrial civilisations. The…
Traces of iron-60 have been found in Antarctic ice.
Iron-60 is a radioactive isotope produced in supernovae that does not occur naturally on Earth. In 2025, scientists…
MIT engineers have created a chip that uses heat to perform calculations.
MIT engineers developed silicon microstructures that perform matrix multiplications using only heat flow, without…
Tridymite, a rare mineral, has been found in Gale Crater on Mars.
Tridymite is a silica mineral that forms under conditions of high temperature and low pressure. Its presence in Gale…
A distant star that exploded twice has been detected.
In August 2025, the LIGO and Virgo detectors registered a gravitational wave signal suggesting a star exploding…
A quantum spin liquid has been observed for the first time at the University of Oxford.
Physicists at Oxford developed a new approach to observe a quantum spin liquid, a state of quantum matter that never…
Scientists have created crystals where electrons behave as if they live in a fourth spatial dimension.
MIT researchers, working at the MagLab, discovered a new family of crystals stacked with a slight twist where…
The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second.
Since 1983, the speed of light in a vacuum has been a constant defined by convention. The exact value is 299,792,458…
A lightning bolt is about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
The temperature of a lightning bolt can reach 30,000 kelvin, while the Sun's surface is around 5,500 kelvin. The heat…
There are more ways to shuffle a 52-card deck than there are atoms on Earth.
The number of possible combinations of a 52-card deck is 52 factorial, a number with 68 digits. It is much larger…
There are bacteria that breathe iron instead of oxygen.
Some bacteria use iron instead of oxygen to produce energy. These microorganisms live in oxygen-free environments…