In the southeast corner of New Mexico, the United States is burying decades of nuclear waste. The storage site, and the earth above it, will remain lethal for millennia...perhaps as much as 300,000 years! How can we warn people that far...

The North American continent used to have deep roots extending far into the Earth's mantle. They melted. Here's how scientists think they disappeared.

Humans love to decorate, and that's been true for a long time. Early humans have been painting on the walls for tens of thousand of years, and their work helped us understand a lot about their world and our own. From Lascaux Cave in...

The Giant's Causeway is a rock formation that is so otherworldly that it seems like it was made by supernatural beings. But these incredible hexagonal columns of rock aren't the result of giant masons. They formed through a quirk of...

When you see a bunch of fossils in a museum, you might not think about how unlikely it is that they got there. But there's a lot of lucky dice rolls that landed that mastodon in the museum, and researchers are really motivated to find...

We all picked up new habits during the COVID-19 pandemic. But not all of them stuck. Here's the data on whether we're better or worse drivers, exercisers, social media community members, neighbors, and self carers than during and before...

Whether or not you think humans should be announcing our presence to the cosmos, we're doing it, anyway. Both intentionally, and not. And if aliens really do exist, there are several ways they could find us. Here are six of them.

Astronomers have spent the past century (roughly) trying to figure out where all the elements on the Periodic Table come from. For example, the oldest hydrogen emerged when the universe was just a baby (Big Bang nucleosynthesis). And the...

While the word "mummy" may conjure up an image of King Tut (or a 1999 Brendan Fraser action/adventure movie), ancient Egyptians were far from the only culture that mummified their dead. Around the world, and across millennia, people...

If you've got a uterus, you've probably heard of menopause. But there's a lot that doesn't get talked about when it comes to this period, or lack thereof. This video is going to break down the real deal with menopause and give you...

In a remote corner of Siberia, a Russian scientist is trying to restore the ecosystem to the way it was during the last Ice Age. And while Pleistocene Park is definitely eccentric, it has implications for the future of the entire planet.

When humans are gone, nature will reclaim our cities and break down much of what we've built. But some of the things we've made will last much longer than others, and they're probably not the things you'd expect.

If you’ve been around the internet long enough, you’ve probably heard of the “conspiracy” that birds aren’t real (It's not a real conspiracy theory; it was started as a joke). Well for decades, scientists have been using fake birds (even...

Endometriosis is a disease that affects about one in ten women, and comes from tissue inside the uterus making its way out. But it turns out that's not the only way to get it, because there are people without uteruses who have it too....

Mushroom foragers rejoice! Your lives just got a whole lot easier! Now, we can farm four mushrooms that used to only be found in the wild: morels, huitlacoche, chanterelles, and truffles. Here's why it took so long.

Space travel is infamously bad for your health. But it turns out that in some very specific cases, space travel may actually be beneficial. Like by strengthening your bones, or repairing your DNA.

To explain how the world works, scientists occasionally have an idea that — upon further testing — turns out to be wrong. From rays that carry coldness instead of heat, to a neighboring star that causes regular mass extinctions on Earth,...

Most cultures who developed metalworking technology never let the skill go to waste. But in what's now Michigan, Native Americans started making metal tools well before anyone else did, and then stopped. And the reason why this happened...

There's one human innovation that's so critical to our lives that every modern human group seems to have it. And you probably have some in your craft drawer - it's glue! Turns out there's a long history of glue-making that cements it as...

How much information can a human brain store? If we treat them like computers, one estimate is that they can hold 55 million ebooks worth of information. But why restrict ourselves to biology? If you had the right technology, how much...

Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires are most of the classic gemstones adorning royal jewels. But they used to be accompanied by a stone that nowadays is most often found in museum gift shops: Amethyst. Here's the story of...

Science can help solve the world’s most important problems, and what could be more important than keeping pee off your shoes? Yes, even the lowly urinal—and those who use it—can benefit from the occasional peer-reviewed study. So let’s...

Whether you saw a quantum computer featured in a tech news blog post, or that Black Mirror episode "Joan is Awful", the chandelier-like look may have inspired the thought "Why does it look like that?" Well, it's not for the sci-fi...

Even though cleft lips and palates are really common, there's still a lot of research that needs to be done into why they form. But scientists have found a whole new line of evidence that might crack the case wide open, and it's in dog...