32 weird technologies that never took off
We've seen many big hitters capture our imagination, alongside a handful of oddities and misfits that were less successful.
By Sascha Pare published
The Cave of Crystals in Chihuahua, Mexico, is buried almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) beneath Earth's surface and contains giant gypsum crystal beams that are up to 37 feet (11 m) long.
By Mike Wall published
China's launched its Chang'e 6 sample-return mission, which will haul dirt and rocks home from the mysterious lunar far side.
By Ben Turner published
New James Webb Space Telescope observations of the exoplanet WASP-43b reveal that the hot gas giant is tidally locked, meaning one side permanently faces its sun while the other always stares out into space.
By Dawn P. Coe, Elizabeth (Kip) Webster published
Your running speed partly comes down to factors you can't control, like genetics, and partly relies on your training.
By Clarissa Brincat published
And like dogs, why do cats also sniff fellow felines' behinds?
By Carys Matthews last updated
When and where will the double cicada brood emerge? Here's what to expect from this rare phenomenon, which occurs only once every 221 years.
By Laura Geggel last updated
Until the end of the last ice age, American cheetahs, enormous armadillolike creatures and giant sloths called North America home. But it's long puzzled scientists why these animals went extinct about 10,000 years ago.
By Angely Mercado published
The causes range from innocuous media exposure to severe mental illness.
By Ben Turner published
A new imaging technique, which captured frozen lithium atoms transforming into quantum waves, could be used to probe some of the most poorly understood aspects of the quantum world.
By Adam Mann last updated
Reference Quantum mechanics, or quantum physics, is the body of scientific laws that describe the wacky behavior of photons, electrons and the other subatomic particles that make up the universe.
By Andrey Feldman published
Physicists have proposed modifications to the infamous Schrödinger's cat paradox that could help explain why quantum particles can exist in more than one state simultaneously, while large objects (like the universe) seemingly cannot.
By Laurel Hamers published
What's the science behind starting a fire with flint and steel?
By Victoria Atkinson published
Goldene is the latest 2D material to be made since graphene was first created in 2004.
By Sam Lemonick published
More than two decades ago, scientists predicted that at ultra-low temperatures, many atoms could undergo 'quantum superchemistry' and chemically react as one. They've finally shown it's real.
By Owen Hughes published
A new type of hybrid sodium-ion battery that offers both high capacity and rapid-charging capabilities could power mobile devices, electric vehicles and space tech.
By Samar Khatiwala published
Climate models can be a million lines of code long and can take months to run on supercomputers. A new algorithm has dramatically shortened that time.
By Keumars Afifi-Sabet published
Scientists built a "smart filter" that can work with a cheap smartphone camera to transform low-resolution photos into supersharp images without glare and other issues.