Science

Friedrich Miescher first isolated DNA in 1869 from the pus on discarded surgical bandages. Alexander Fleming noticed green mold had cleared bacteria from a plate, which led to Antibiotic. Fred Hoyle coined the name Big Bang in 1949 while backing a rival theory. Émilie du Châtelet described conserved energy in the margins of her translation of Newton. Einstein argued in 1939 that black holes could not exist, and astronomers later photographed one. The stories here run from atoms and cells to planets and galaxies.

• Solar SystemThe Sun holds 99.86% of all the mass in the Solar System. Every planet, moon and comet together add up to under 0.002%.

  14 min
• Quantum mechanicsRichard Feynman once said nobody understands quantum mechanics. Yet its predictions are remarkably accurate.

  12 min
• DinosaurA Tyrannosaurus thigh bone reported in 2005 still held soft, flexible tissue.

  12 min
• SupernovaA supernova can briefly shine as bright as an entire galaxy. Its peak light rivals all of a galaxy's stars combined.

  12 min
• DNADNA was first scraped from the pus on discarded surgical bandages. Friedrich Miescher isolated it in 1869.

  10 min
• Big BangThe name Big Bang began as a passing remark on the BBC. Fred Hoyle, who favored a rival theory, coined it in 1949.

  12 min
• Black holeEinstein used his own theory in 1939 to argue black holes were impossible. Decades later, astronomers photographed one.

  11 min
• Climate changeIn 2024, Earth had its warmest year since records began in 1850. It ran 1.60 C above the pre-industrial baseline.

  12 min
• NeuronA single nerve cell in your body can stretch a meter from your spine to your toes.

  13 min
• MarsMars has a volcano about three times as tall as Mount Everest. Olympus Mons climbs nearly 26 kilometers from the plains.

  11 min
• Stem cellA stem cell can become heart muscle, nerve, bone or blood, depending on the signals it gets.

  12 min
• ScienceFor most of history, nobody was called a scientist. People studying nature were natural philosophers or men of science.

  12 min
• BacteriaIn 1676, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek became the first person to see bacteria. No one else saw them for over a century.

  9 min
• VaccineA vaccine teaches the immune system to recognize and destroy a threat before infection takes hold.

  10 min
• PhysicsFor much of the past two millennia, physics was not even a separate subject. It sat under natural philosophy.

  11 min
• EvolutionEvolution is the change, over successive generations, in the inherited characteristics of biological populations. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes belonging to the last universal common ancestor, known as…

  25 min
• String theoryString theory asks physicists to imagine that the smallest ingredients of nature are not points at all. Instead, each one is a tiny one-dimensional object called a string. In any given version of the theory there is only one kind of…

  21 min
• Plate tectonicsOcean floor works like a tape recording of Earth's magnetic past. Striped rock helped prove plates move.

  12 min
• GalaxyIn a typical galaxy, most of the mass is dark matter, not stars. Only a few percent shows up as stars and nebulae.

  9 min
• AntibioticIn 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed green mold had killed bacteria around it on one of his plates.

  12 min
• Human evolutionThe fossil Lucy got her name from a Beatles song played loudly in the dig camp.

  15 min
• EnergyÉmilie du Châtelet first described conserved energy in the margins of her translation of Newton.

  11 min
• Special relativitySpecial relativity says moving clocks run slower. Einstein published the theory in 1905 using two assumptions.

  11 min
• PhotonA photon has no charge and no rest mass, yet it carries all light. It also carries the electromagnetic force.

  11 min
• Nuclear fissionNuclear fission, the splitting of an atom's nucleus into two or more smaller nuclei, passed its most important test on the 2nd of December 1942. Enrico Fermi had already pulled every control rod but one out of a towering stack called…

  15 min
• Theory of relativityThe name "theory of relativity" was not coined by Einstein. Alfred Bucherer first used the phrase in 1906.

  9 min
• Natural selectionWithin fifty years of the first dark moth being caught, nearly all moths in industrial Manchester were dark.

  12 min
• PhotosynthesisSome sea slugs steal chloroplasts from the algae they eat. They store them and live on photosynthesis alone for months.

  11 min
• GravityGravity is the feeblest of the four fundamental forces, yet it steers planets, stars, and even the path of light.

  13 min
• VirusFewer than 100 norovirus particles are enough to make a person sick.

  13 min
• ElectricityThe word electricity comes from elektron, the Greek word for amber, coined by William Gilbert in 1600.

  9 min
• AtomEleven protons make sodium, and twenty-nine make copper. An atom's proton count alone decides which element it is.

  10 min
• ThermodynamicsThe zeroth law of thermodynamics got its odd number by arriving late. Physicists needed it to define temperature.

  11 min
• GeneticsGregor Mendel's pea plants gave purple or white flowers, never a shade between.

  18 min
• Higgs bosonThe Higgs boson appears in roughly one collision out of every ten billion at the Large Hadron Collider, and it vanishes almost the instant it exists. This elementary particle belongs to the Standard Model of particle physics, and it is a…

  17 min
• Dark matterDark matter, added up from the Sun out to the orbit of Neptune, would weigh about as much as a large asteroid. That is a strikingly small amount. Yet across the universe as a whole, dark matter makes up roughly 85% of all mass. It does not…

  16 min
• Periodic tableIn 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev used his periodic table's gaps to predict elements no one had seen.

  11 min
• ElectromagnetismThe push you feel when you press on a solid object is electromagnetic. Nothing actually touches in the way it seems to.

  10 min