Solar flares are one of the most powerful phenomena in our solar system. These bursts of radiation sporadically erupt from the Sun and can unleash the energy equivalent of billions of hydrogen bombs in mere minutes. A better understanding of solar flares can provide valuable insight into the nature of our Sun, as well as how these events can affect Earth. Let's dive into the basics of solar flares, from what they are to the dangers they can present. What Is a Solar Flare?Image captured by NASA's ...read more

Earth’s atmosphere is in such constant flux that we have a tired old saying about it: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” If we lived on Jupiter — where a single storm has been raging uninterrupted for almost two centuries, and possibly much longer — we’d have to muster more patience.But perhaps we wouldn’t have to wait forever. The Great Red Spot, an enormous high-pressure system which astronomers have tracked regularly since the late 19th century, is steadily dw ...read more

Taken most broadly, artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines. We’re seeing it more and more in everything from self-driving cars to facial recognition software to your smart refrigerator. For better or worse, AI is everywhere. According to many experts, it will bring on the next industrial revolution, changing the face of humankind and what we’re capable of in our daily lives. Synthetic reality is the next step in AI, where virtual or digital realities are generated using art ...read more

Living organisms activated a natural light source nearly 300 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. A group of scientists from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History used genetic data and statistical modelling to demonstrate that bioluminescence — the ability of living things to produce light through chemical reactions — first evolved in marine invertebrates called octocorals about 540 million years ago. Look ...read more

Leaving aside the fun and fascinating question about whether time exists — even if we assume that time is a real entity — our own personal perceptions of the flow of time can slow, stretch, speed up, and everything in between.Our brains constantly monitor a complex influx of signals arriving with different timings, and the balancing act from all those signals, combined with many internal operations, combine to give us our sense of time’s passage. These systems work…well, most of the time ...read more

For almost a decade, Oprah Winfrey served on WeightWatchers’ board of directors and also appeared in commercials promoting the diet program. “You can eat bread!” she promised viewers.Then in late 2023, Winfrey disclosed she had added weight-loss medication to her maintenance routine. She soon sold her shares in WeightWatchers and decided not to seek reelection for the board. Her announcements sparked a larger public interest in the possibilities of weight-loss medications.Weight-loss medic ...read more

The practice of drinking tea with milk has been around for centuries and enjoyed by many cultures throughout the world. Milk tea is said to have originated in China, where it remains one of the country’s — indeed one of Asia’s — most popular nonalcoholic drinks.But in the 1980s, tea vendors in Taiwan began serving a novel variation of the beloved beverage. The milk tea was served ice-cold and combined with fen yuan, a traditional Taiwanese dessert made with ice, sugar, and small, sweet t ...read more

Andrea Mosie greeted me at the doorway to the moon with a wink. “Are you ready?” she asked. I had been warned about the technical procedures that would precede my visit, but I was not prepared for what I would see, and she knew it.Only a few hundred humans have ever been to space. Only a handful have ever walked on the moon. But there is one other way to experience that other realm, and it is through a doorway at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. I entered a boringly tan federal buil ...read more

The Neanderthals had a good run. They were around from at least 200,000 years ago to about 42,000 years ago, only a couple millennia after they began to interbreed with modern humans. After that window, all physical traces of them disappearedThroughout that period, though, Neanderthals would have certainly experienced some cold weather — so much that it’s unlikely they would have walked around completely naked. In fact, some research has shown that the temperatures were likely too cold in pa ...read more

With millions of cases per year in the United States, strep throat is an extremely common disease. You might recognize it from a distinctively unpleasant scratchy feeling in the throat, or as the source of many sick days from school for young children. But there’s still no vaccine for this bacterial infection, mainly because antibiotics can provide an effective treatment. With outbreaks of severe strep throat infections on the rise worldwide — particularly in countries with limited access t ...read more