When people think of natural wonders, they tend to focus on those big ones – the Grand Canyon or Victoria Falls, for instance. And while those are iconic, they’re also pretty hearty and destined to last for the long haul. Nothing’s likely to ruin the Grand Canyon any time soon. But there have been many…
Author: Ian Fortey
Fossil fuel is a dying industry in the throes of its zombie phase, simply refusing to stay in the ground. The world needs alternative energy sources that are viable and powerful. We have solar cells, wind power and other renewables now, but we’re really not using them to their full potential. The future has many…
For many people in the Western world, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to food. On any given night you can order a meal online and have someone bring cuisine from Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Korea, Brazil and pretty much anywhere on Earth right to your door. You can eat grapes that have been cultivated…
Traveling is one of those unique and unusual experiences for a lot of people that mixes pleasure and pain in equal amounts. Everyone likes being on vacation, but few people like the process of getting to a vacation spot. And airports, by and large, are massive stressors. There are huge crowds, deadlines, security, the threat…
Around 71% of the Earth is covered by the oceans. That works out to around 320.3 million cubic miles of water. That’s a lot of water. So it’s no surprise that the oceans hide countless mysteries and marvels. Some of them are far more amazing than others. 10. The City of Alexandria One of the…
Humans decided a long time ago that we needed a place to house the people who refused to abide by the rules of society. Prisons were places to put people until they either learned the error of their ways or they died. But what a prison did behind its walls has varied greatly over time…
For most of us, prison is a thing we understand through the prism of pop culture. We see it in movies and TV shows, and even on the news. We have a concept of how it’s supposed to work, and it’s weird to discover it doesn’t always follow the path we expect. But remember, these…
Toys are an underappreciated asset in the world at large. They keep children busy, and that means they’re worth their weight in gold. But it’s rare we ever hear about where a toy comes from or what inspired it. Some of the most popular toys in history were inspired in the unlikeliest ways. 10. Play…
Strictly speaking, there aren’t a lot of cults out there doing stuff we’d consider “normal.” The moment the label cult is applied, things get weird. But not every cult is created equal, and some are very much more bizarre than others. 10. The Coconut Cult The world produces about 62 million metric tons of coconut…
The living world is full of weirdness. Just look at goblin sharks and platypuses. Biology can account for a whole lot of why things are the way they are, but every once in a while something happens that leaves biologists shrugging their shoulders. 10. Handedness Are you a lefty or a righty? A whopping 90%…
The world around us is a constant flurry of chemical reactions that we never even see and rarely stop to think about. The chemistry of everyday life usually only becomes relevant to us when things get a little dangerous. You spill gasoline on your shoe at the gas station, you accidentally swallow some acid, that…
DNA has been the single most valuable tool in solving crimes in the last century. Genetic evidence has proven capable of solving crimes that have been unsolved for decades but the problem is often how to get the DNA needed to solve those crimes. It’s not enough for a criminal to leave evidence at a…
The word “mutation” tends to have a negative connotation, in no small part thanks to science fiction. We think of mutations as something gone wrong. But mutation is also how things improve. Throughout human history, there had been some remarkable mutations with some incredible side effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXDg78IDcCY&t= This is an encore of one of our…
History is like science in many ways. It seeks to explain the truth, but must be open to new information. Sometimes what we think we know isn’t true at all, and that’s okay. The result is that we all get to be blown away when we discover that we’ve learned everything wrong and delighted or…
War doesn’t come cheap. People complain about the budget allocated for defense all the time because the numbers are astronomical. It costs millions of dollars just to make a single nuclear warhead, and countries like the US and Russia have hundreds. It seems crass to discuss the financial cost of a war when lives are…
Animals have been an integral part of human development. We’ve always used them for food, but they have contributed in almost countless other ways to the evolution of our culture and society. Not just companions, but for travel, for agriculture, for medicine, for protection and for war. We ask a lot of the animal kingdom.…
The moon is one of those things we all count on being there in the sky. When’s the last time you ever pondered the idea of losing it? Luckily Hollywood is around to take that burden for you in movies like Moonfall, where we get to see in IMAX how the world would burn unless…
Science is a helpful tool to explain the world around us. Observation, experimentation and some intuition go into determining how things work and why. One of the best things about science is that it’s malleable. Science isn’t trying to be a religion, it’s just trying to explain things. If we learn something new, science changes…
In a lot of ways, Hollywood is like a Wild West of entertainment. We may see a glitzy finished product, but the road to get there is full of bad choices, danger, money and unpredictable madness. Sometimes this comes through on screen, but more often than not, you need to dig deep to find out…
Fossil fuel is a dying industry in the throes of its zombie phase, simply refusing to stay in the ground.The world needs alternative energy sources that are viable and powerful. We have solar cells, wind power and other renewables now, but we’re really not using them to their full potential. The future has many possibilities…
They say necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes technology just doesn’t line up and make everything practical. Some ideas that are common in the present were thought up in a bygone era that just wasn’t ready for such innovation. It just goes to show a good idea is a good idea, it just…
Enrico Fermi set the groundwork for nuclear power back in the 1930s. By the 1940s we had all the horrible evidence we needed of the awesome power that splitting an atom can produce. Today there are almost 14,000 nuclear warheads in the world, down from an all-time high of over 70,000 in the 1980s. Around…
There’s an old adage that says “crime doesn’t pay.” Unfortunately, a lot of criminals steal things to make money precisely to ensure that crime does pay them. Now for some criminals this doesn’t pan out at all. But for others, it actually works out much better than you’d think. Sometimes the difference between crime failing…
Some of the deepest mines in the world extend miles below the surface of the Earth. Deep, dark pits that stretch on into forever. The world is littered with them and we’ve used them to mine everything from salt to gold to obscure metals like tantalum and gallium. But every so often you’ll find a…