Why do most mammals have 5 fingers?
The simple question of "why five" has puzzled scientists from multiple fields, and the answer still isn't entirely clear.
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 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 Sascha Pare published
Hammer-headed bats are named after the males' oversized boxy heads, which evolved to amplify and project the honking sounds they produce to impress females during courtship displays.
By Marlowe Starling published
Cats are masters of contortion — and the laws of physics — which helps them stick the landing more times than not.
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 Keumars Afifi-Sabet published
How can we truly know if AI is sentient? We do not yet fully understand the nature of human consciousness, so we cannot discount the possibility that today's AI is indeed sentient — and that we are mistreating it to potentially grave consequences.