Educational Science

In Diamonds' Flaws, Finding the Secret History of Continents

Tiny flaws in diamonds hold the secret to the formation of the first continents. In a new study, researchers used inclusions — imperfections derided by jewelers but valuable to scientists — to trace diamond formation. They found that the sulfide minerals inside the inclusions were last at the surface of...

Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun?

The world's most precise clocks run at a steady pace, messing up by only about 1 second every 300 million years. But the brain takes those rhythmic seconds and makes its own sense of time — stretching the ticks and scrunching the tocks. But why can't the brain keep time...

Australia is the kingdom of marsupials, home to furry kangaroos, koalas and wombats. The continent has so many marsupials, it raises the question: Did these pouch-bearing mammals arise Down Under? The answer is an unqualified (or un-koalafied) no. Marsupials were around for at least 70 million years before they made...

In Notre Dame Fire, Echoes of the 1837 Blaze That Destroyed Russia's Winter Palace

In a city graced with remarkable architecture, the cathedral of Notre Dame may be Paris' most striking edifice. So when it was engulfed by a fire that toppled its spire, it seemed as if more than a building had been scorched; the nation had lost a piece of its soul....

Jesus wasn't the only man to be crucified. Here's the history behind this brutal practice.

The most famous crucifixion in the world took place when, according to the New Testament, Jesus was put to death by the Romans. But he was far from the only person who perished on the cross. In antiquity, thousands upon thousands of people were crucified, which at the time was...

Smallpox: The World's First Eradicated Disease

Smallpox is a debilitating and occasionally fatal disease that's highly contagious. Prior to 1980, the disease killed 3 out of every 10 people who became infected, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Overall, smallpox caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people before it was...

How Did Nearsighted People Manage Before Glasses Were Invented?

In 2017, the super-rich shared with The New Yorker their secrets for doomsday prep. Some were building luxury bunkers and stockpiling weapons. Others were buying property in New Zealand. Still others revealed that, in thinking about the possibility of civilization's collapse, they had been especially concerned with a problem right...

A 30-Million-Page Archive of Human History Was Just Launched into Space

Last week, a 30-million-page archive of human history and civilization launched aboard a spacecraft headed for the moon. The so-called Lunar Library is a small nanotech device that resembles a DVD, and it's intended as a backup plan so that everything we've ever learned as humans doesn't get lost in...

Why Do Our Fingernails Keep Growing Until the Day We Die?

At 20 weeks in the womb, humans suddenly sprout tough little casings from the tips of our tiny digits. By the time we're born, our fingers and toes are crowned by fully-formed nails that will be with us for the rest of our lives. Over the ensuing decades, the average...

What Are Stem Cells?

The term stem cells has become part of the mainstream lexicon, likely to be overheard in conversations anywhere from a baseball game to cocktail get-togethers. But what exactly are these cells? Along with phrases such as that's just immoral or stem cells could be the end-all cure, one could easily...