How long can a person live? The oldest human ever, at least that’s been confirmed, was Jeanne Calment, who lived to see 122. So that is literally as long as a human can live right now until someone gets older. The average human lifespan is about 70 years but there are many factors that play…
Author: Ian Fortey
One of science fiction’s favorite themes is time travel. HG Wells wrote The Time Machine back in 1895, but Gaspar wrote El Anacronópete in 1887, which also featured time travel. Charles Dickens hammered out A Christmas Carol in 1843, which also technically features a man traveling both to the past and future. Our fascination with…
Everyone likes to think they’re in control of their own lives and, at the very least, their own bodies. Bodily autonomy is a thing that people talk about. Most people agree that you have the right to decide what you’re going to do for yourself. You can refuse medical treatment, if you want, for instance.…
If you spend much time on social media these days, you’ve probably run across at least one joke someone has made about a sleep paralysis demon. It makes for a quirky punch line, but it’s not a term pulled out of nowhere. The idea of a sleep paralysis demon has existed for a long time,…
How did you start your day today? Did your alarm go off? Did you sleep in a little bit, or were you up right away? Do you work out in the morning? Take a shower? Have breakfast? Maybe you skip all that and head right to work. There are probably thousands of ways you could…
Science fiction is often predicated on the idea that there are many places in the universe where humans or humanoid life could comfortably exist. There are hundreds of planets in Star Wars and Star Trek that are just teeming with life. You can strut around like you own the place. But in our reality, we…
The notion of using fingerprints in the investigation of crimes and as a means of identifying individuals began in the late 1800s. Prior to this, many cultures had been aware of unique fingerprint properties, and even ancient societies used fingerprints in clay as a form of identification. Babylonians were using fingerprints and clay tablets for…
According to surveys, nearly 80% of people report being exposed to scams during a given year. Though young people tend to think of this as something that old people fall for, 18 to 24-year-olds had the highest median losses of any age group, and 35 to 44-year-olds were the most likely to be scammed. Scammers…
Like the Bermuda Triangle, Area 51 is one of those enduring mysteries that technically was solved, but some people still believe it isn’t fully solved, if that makes sense. As in, the official explanation isn’t cutting the mustard. Not for everyone, anyway. And, to be fair, there are things that happen at Area 51 that…
In 1968, Ohio State University glaciologist John Mercer wrote a paper about the dangers of the Antarctic ice cap melting. He studied data from glaciers and dry lakes that had evidence of once being submerged and concluded that there must have been a time when all that ice was liquid, about 120,000 years ago. He…
Are you a cat person or a dog person? If you’re a cat person, this one might be a struggle for you. Although, to be fair, there are a lot of cats out there aren’t there? Maine coon, Tonkinese, Russian Blue; but for our purposes we’ll focus on dogs today. The American Kennel Club recognizes…
Do you hate being stuck in traffic? Do you hate when you get to a store to buy something and it’s all sold out? Do you hate your neighbor? Generally speaking, most of us will toss the word hate without giving it a lot of thought about things that are unpleasant to us. Experiences, people,…
Of all the places in the universe you could go, a black hole is probably one of the last places you actually want to be. Even if you know very little about a black hole, you must think that perhaps it’s not one of those bucket list destinations. In truth, there are many reasons you’d…
You don’t hear about mass hysteria often these days, but most of us know the term and have a general sense of the meaning. In very simple terms most of us would probably describe it as a condition where everyone goes a little crazy at the same time. There have been cases in the past…
You can’t swing a cat in this world without hitting something made up of chemicals. That cat is made up of chemicals. The air you’re swinging it in is made of chemicals. Even if we tend to think of chemicals as dangerous substances like acids or volatile substances made in laboratories, basic things like water…
You might not be able to tell just by looking, but carbon is the fundamental element to life on Earth. DNA and RNA are made of carbon. Not only carbon, of course, but carbon can bond with other molecules to make up the long chains that are necessary for life to exist. Not just human…
Head into the supermarket today, and you will find countless items on the shelf that proudly bear non-GMO labels. They’re usually located near where a product claims it’s gluten or fat-free. The display of this label, while saying nothing at all about GMOs, is clearly meant to relieve you, the consumer. It assures you that…
At this point, if you have never seen a zombie movie or otherwise experienced a zombie fiction you may actually live in a strange trans-dimensional bubble. Whether you like the genre or not, you should at least be aware of zombie fiction and the basic tenets of it. From 1914’s Voodoo through 1932’s White Zombie…
The universe is awash in extremes. The fastest, the oldest, the furthest, there are all kinds of things you can look into and be amazed by what nature has created. But what about the coldest? You’ve probably heard of absolute zero before, but do you know what happens when you reach it? Or why nothing…
Somewhere between one in 20 and one in 10 people claim to have had an out-of-body experience in their lifetime. If you’ve never experienced one, it can be hard to wrap your head around exactly what it is. You may have an inclination to think that someone who has experienced one was imagining things. To…
Nothing lasts forever be it cold November rain or the world on which you live. One day our sun is going to die and, in terms of apocalypses, things are going to get super bad no matter what neighborhood you live in. Lucky for us that’s not scheduled to happen anytime soon. Rest assured this…
What did you think about when you saw the name of this article? Did you click on it because you already know the answer and wanted to see if we got it right? Or maybe because you never actually wondered about this yourself and it made you curious? Or do you think about this often…
Sleep. It’s the place where we’re all Vikings. Or donuts. Whatever it is that happens to you in your dreams. It’s the most horizontal you can be in a day, and it’s usually pretty relaxing. Man, who doesn’t love a good sleep? But what happens if you don’t get enough of it? Everyone’s probably pulled…
For some reason climate change is still being debated in some circles. This may be because we live in a world where people just want to argue about literally everything no matter what it is or even why. For the purposes of our question today we’re going to take it as a fact that climate…