Science
1257 verified facts in this category, showing 1–100.
- Thiomargarita magnifica carries more than 700,000 copies of its genetic blueprint in a single cell.
- Scientists revived a roundworm that had been frozen in permafrost for 46,000 years.
- Venus takes about 243 Earth days to spin once on its axis, longer than its 225-day year, although because it spins backward the Sun rises there about every 117 Earth days.
- Dried-out tardigrades have survived exposure to space in low Earth orbit and pressures about six times those of the deepest ocean trench, and some revived after more than 30 years frozen in moss.
- Thiomargarita namibiensis occasionally reaches a size of three-fourths of a millimeter.
- Unlike previously discovered giant bacteria composed of hundreds to thousands of cells, Thiomargarita magnifica is a single bacterial cell.
- Thiomargarita magnifica is more than a thousand times bigger than a typical bacterium.
- An international team led by Nobel laureate Andrew Fire, including researchers from the Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas (CSIC-UPV), discovered a new biological entity in the human microbiome called 'Obelisks', with findings published in the journal Cell on October 30, 2024.
- A meridian near 27° east longitude (equivalent to 153° west on the opposite side of Earth) divides Earth into Eastern and Western Hemispheres that reflect nearly identical amounts of sunlight, a symmetry that persisted throughout a 25-year satellite record.
- The 27°E meridian produces a 'triple symmetry' where the Eastern and Western Hemispheres have nearly identical ice-free ocean fractions, nearly identical clear-sky reflected sunlight, and nearly identical cloud contributions to the overall energy budget.
- NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory observed an 'orphan' black hole shredding a star far outside its galaxy's core, marking the first such event seen so far from a galaxy's center.
- The 'Sapphire Canyon' rock sample was identified after peer review as containing potential biosignatures, clues that past life may have been present on Mars, though not proof of life.
- The fault slip on the southern San Andreas Fault triggered by the 2017 Chiapas earthquake began minutes after that earthquake and continued for more than a year.
- A study estimated a maximum human life span of 210–557 years using aging models, compared with a theoretical non-aging prediction exceeding 1,700 years.
- The Open Science Collaboration replicated each of the 100 psychology studies only once using roughly the original sample sizes, and when researchers applied that same low-powered design to a data set where each study had been replicated with more than 30 times the original number of participants, the resulting replication rate was even lower than the OSC's.
- In the graphene/boron nitride stack, near-field electromagnetic energy transfer via hyperbolic phonon-polaritons was found to account for up to 75% of the electrical power injected into the device, becoming the dominant energy transfer mechanism.
- Bioinformatic analysis identified nearly 30,000 species of Obelisks in biological samples collected worldwide, including soils, rivers, oceans, wastewater, and animal microbiomes.
- Obelisks have a circular RNA genome of only about 1,000 nucleotides.
- When mid-infrared wavelengths are included, the Virgil galaxy appears to contain an enormous, active black hole, with no sign of that black hole visible in ultraviolet or visible wavelengths.
- Asteroid Apophis is expected to pass within 32,000 km of Earth during its close approach in April 2029, more than ten times closer than the Moon.
- Homo luzonensis lived on the Philippine island of Luzon at least 50,000 to 67,000 years ago.
- About 60 billion neutrinos pass through each square centimeter of Earth every second.
- The KM3NeT/ARCA experiment detected the most energetic neutrino ever measured, at 220 petaelectronvolts (PeV), on 13 February 2023.
- A Moderna patent filed in 2016 contains a 'reverse complement' of a 19-nucleotide sequence found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.
- Scientists recovered proteins from the tooth of an extinct rhinoceros found in Canada's high Arctic, dating to between 21 million and 24 million years old, far older than the previous widely accepted protein record of 3.5 million years.
- The biotech company Colossal Biosciences created three genetically engineered canids it presented as 'dire wolves'—males Romulus and Remus, born in October 2024, and female Khaleesi, born in January 2025—by making 20 DNA changes to gray-wolf genes.
- Patient Tim Andrews lived with a gene-edited pig kidney transplant for a record 271 days before it failed and was removed in October 2025.
- Scientists have found about 2,400 different germs living in the human belly button.
- Eight-legged mites can live on the human face, especially around the hairline, eye sockets, and eyelashes, where they mate, lay eggs, and hatch.
- In a Mayo Clinic study, all 25 participants had two arthritic knees, and both knees improved dramatically even though only one knee received stem cells while the other received only a saline control injection.
- Stonehenge's altar stone originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles from Salisbury Plain, weighs more than six tons, and was transported approximately 4,600 years ago, probably without the use of wheels.
- A genetically modified pig kidney kept a patient named Tim Andrews alive without dialysis for 271 days, marking the first reported use of a pig kidney as a bridge to human organ transplantation.
- The remains of the first known ancient human hybrid, the offspring of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan, were discovered in 2012 and confirmed through ancient DNA analysis in 2018.
- In 2010, scientists identified Denisovans, an archaic human lineage that went extinct around the same time as Neanderthals, using mitochondrial DNA extracted from a finger bone.
- In 2016, a baby boy became the first child known to inherit DNA from three parents, with most of his DNA from his mother and father and a third donor providing healthy mitochondrial DNA.
- Archaeologists found stone tools up to 3 million years old buried alongside fossils of Paranthropus in southwestern Kenya, providing evidence that a non-human hominin developed stone technology.
- Fossil analysis of the ancient whale Perucetus colossus, which lived along Peru's coast more than 37 million years ago, indicated it may have weighed more than 300 tons and measured about 60 feet long.
- Blood-vessel remnants were discovered inside a fossilized rib of 'Scotty,' a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that was more than 40 feet long and weighed almost 10 tons when alive.
- The ancient tetrapod footprints in Poland were found on a former marine tidal flat or lagoon in an abandoned mountain quarry, suggesting the evolution from fins to limbs occurred in an intertidal or lagoon environment rather than a seasonally flooded forest.
- Juvenile rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) dramatically increased their reconciliation rates after being transferred into a group of the more conciliatory stumptail macaques (Macaca arctoides).
- The fossil of this swan-necked, Velociraptor-like dinosaur had features so unusual that scientists initially suspected it might be a fake.
- In 2017, scientists described a newly discovered dinosaur species that resembled Velociraptor but had a long, swan-like neck.
- NASA's Perseverance Mars rover found mudstones on Mars containing unusual features that scientists say are potentially associated with signs of ancient microbial life.
- A neutrino detector submerged in the Mediterranean Sea detected the most energetic neutrino ('ghost particle') ever recorded.
- A study found that prenatal cfDNA screening test results showing abnormalities unrelated to fetal chromosomes were linked to a subsequently diagnosed cancer in about 50% of cases in that subgroup.
- A study led by Joe McConnell of the Desert Research Institute linked a volcanic eruption in Alaska to the fall of the Roman Republic.
- A Japanese study published in Environmental Science & Technology found that the best areas for photovoltaic solar energy may be Earth's coldest regions, including high altitudes of the Andes and Himalayas.
- In 2021, academic sleuths revealed that two experiments in the 2012 'signing first' honesty paper were fraudulent.
- A touchdown run by Seattle Seahawks fans during a January 2011 NFL playoff game was recorded by a single Pacific Northwest Seismic Network station (KDK), located about a block from the stadium.
- Researcher Irina Conboy found that joining the circulatory systems of old and young mice improved the older animals' ability to heal from injury.
- Research has found that nonreplicable publications are cited more often than replicable publications.
- Experts estimate that approximately 1.7% of the population is born with intersex traits.
- Researchers modeling four critical organ systems together estimated a median human life span of approximately 156 years, within a range of 146–194 years.
- A mathematical model published in npj Aging estimated that if nearly every reversible hallmark of aging were eliminated, leaving only somatic mutations, the median human life span would be 146–194 years.
- In a study of 35 adults aged 64 and older, 60 daily oxygen-therapy sessions in a pressurized chamber were associated with fewer senescent cells and longer telomeres.
- Irving Kahn, a participant in Nir Barzilai's Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, died in New York in 2015 at age 109, and all four of his siblings became centenarians, including his sister Helen who lived to almost 110 despite smoking for 80 years.
- Transplanting a small number of senescent cells into mice was enough to cause frailty and reduce their survival.
- A study estimated that the extinction of Ice Age megafauna removed just under 10 teragrams (about 10 million tons) of methane emissions a year, accounting for between 12.5% and possibly 100% of the methane reduction at the start of the Younger Dryas.
- In the Greenland ice core studied by Harvard researchers, platinum concentration increased by more than a hundredfold over roughly 20 years before subsiding.
- Researchers found melt glass splashed onto small pieces of bone beside a hearth at Abu Hureyra, indicating molten glass fell into the village while it was inhabited.
- Soil samples from Abu Hureyra contained melt glass—vaporized soil that rapidly solidified—found alongside seeds, cereal grains, and splattered throughout adobe buildings, with most fragments measuring 1–2 millimeters across.
- The termination of the Younger Dryas cooling event occurred within a decade.
- Greenland ice-core samples indicate that temperatures increased by up to 10 °C (18 °F) in just a few decades at the end of the Younger Dryas.
- The warming that ended the Younger Dryas took only about 40–50 years.
- The warming that ended the Younger Dryas took only about 40–50 years, with Greenland ice-core samples showing temperature increases of up to 10°C (18°F) in just a few decades.
- A literal handful of helium-3 has been priced at around $20 million based on investor valuations.
- The Aharonov–Bohm effect is a quantum-mechanical phenomenon in which an electrically charged particle is affected by an electromagnetic potential despite being confined to a region where both the magnetic field and electric field are zero.
- The tautochrone curve has the property that a ball placed anywhere on it will take the same amount of time to slide to the bottom, regardless of starting position.
- Traditional Western astronomical practice groups bright stars to form constellations, unlike the Andean approach which uses dark areas.
- Quantum calculus (q-calculus) is sometimes called 'calculus without limits' because it develops derivatives, integrals, and analogous results without using the notion of limits, in contrast to traditional infinitesimal calculus.
- Octopuses have three hearts: two pump blood to the gills, while the third pumps it to the rest of the body. The heart pumping to the body stops beating when the octopus swims.
- Antarctica is technically a desert, receiving only about 2 inches of precipitation annually in its interior, making it drier than the Sahara.
- Using just seven days of observations from 2024, the Euclid space telescope detected 26 million galaxies.
- Astrophysicist Adam Amara said Euclid found about 500 new strong gravitational lenses within a few days.
- Scientists discovered the giant bacterium Thiomargarita magnifica in the brackish waters of a red mangrove swamp in Guadeloupe, in the Lesser Antilles.
- Thiomargarita magnifica is about 50 times larger than the previous record-holding bacterium.
- Rocks found near the mastodon bones have been proposed to have functioned as hammers and anvils.
- In the two Whitehall studies of British civil servants, health behaviors, blood pressure, and plasma cholesterol together accounted for less than one-third of the social gradient in cardiovascular disease.
- During unstable periods of primate hierarchy formation, dominant animals show the highest basal cortisol levels and highest incidence of atherosclerosis, and after ranks stabilize this pattern reverses, according to Sapolsky (1993b, 2005).
- About 20% of adults without noisy jobs had hearing damage indicative of noise exposure.
- Scientists have identified a previously overlooked but widespread class of organic-rich, ultrafine particles high in Earth's atmosphere.
- A high-altitude atmospheric source of perchlorates, toxic chlorine-based chemicals known to disrupt human thyroid function, has been confirmed as a source of groundwater contamination.
- The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption caused the first recorded observation of a rapid and strong ozone decrease miles above Earth caused by volcanic activity.
- The gap in life expectancy between Black and white populations in the U.S. shrinks as people age.
- At least 600 stem cell clinics in the United States offer stem cell therapies to more than 100,000 patients.
- In one study from Mexico, nearly half of asymptomatic children were found to be shedding norovirus.
- Interannual changes in Earth's east-west albedo symmetry track the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO): during La Niña years the Eastern Hemisphere reflects slightly more sunlight, while during El Niño years the Western Hemisphere reflects slightly more.
- Lead researcher Lee Berger was too large to fit through the 17-inch-wide opening leading to the Homo naledi fossil chamber.
- Fourteen fossilized coprolites found at Oregon's Paisley Caves were confirmed by DNA analysis to be human, with radiocarbon dating indicating they were left between 14,000 and 14,270 years ago.
- Nicolaus Steno's 78-page work 'De solido,' completed less than two years after his 1666 shark dissection, pioneered the use of diagrams showing rock layers in cross-section and established the geological principles of superposition, original horizontality, and lateral continuity.
- Growth rings in the Dueling tyrannosaur's leg bones indicate it was about 20 years old and fully grown when it died, rather than being a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
- After surgery, up to 71% of prescribed postoperative opioid doses went unused, and after laparoscopic cholecystectomy or herniorrhaphy, more than 80% of patients used fewer than 15 opioid doses (typically 5 mg of oxycodone or hydrocodone each).
- The 'tracking the King problem' is a quantum physics puzzle experimentally tested in a 2019 study published in the journal Research.
- Between 1980 and 2000, U.S. women's absolute fat intake increased by 11% even as their relative fat intake (fat as a percentage of total calories) declined by 9%.
- Surface slip of about 10 mm occurred along a 40-km-long section of the southern San Andreas Fault between the Mecca Hills and Bombay Beach following the 2017 Chiapas earthquake.
- The 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's draft report stated: 'Cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.'
- Between 1990 and 2010, an estimated 1,000 manufacturer ingredient-safety decisions were never reported to the FDA or the public.
- Of the 451 GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) notifications voluntarily submitted to the FDA between 1997 and 2012, 100% were decided by individuals or panels with conflicts of interest.
- 95% of the members of the 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee reported at least one industry relationship, and a majority had 20 or more industry connections, including employment, consulting, board membership, research funding, industry-event payments, or industry awards.
- Nearly 1 in 3 American adolescents has prediabetes.