Tag: science

On March 1st, 1954, American scientist John Clark huddled inside a bunker on a remote Pacific island, waiting anxiously as he prepared to detonate the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever tested.

In a secluded grove in Northern California stands Hyperion, rising higher than any known living tree on Earth. At 380 feet tall, this giant coast redwood pierces the sky, taller than Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty.

While most of us think of vegetables as being naturally occurring, there's one vegetable that defies convention - broccoli. Surprisingly, it's not a naturally occurring plant at all, but rather a human-made creation that has been selectively bred over the centuries to become the delectable treat that we know and love today.

It's almost hard to fathom that the most prolific killer on planet Earth is a microscopic speck far tinier than the smallest bacteria. Yet viruses that infect and destroy bacteria, known as bacteriophages or simply phages, are Earth's most abundant organism with an estimated 10³¹ in number globally.

We've all basked in the gentle warmth of sunlight, without giving much thought to the fact that this light left the Sun over eight minutes ago, traversing a whopping 93 million miles to reach us.

In the spring of 1956, as flowers awakened from their wintry slumber across the wooded valleys of England's Charnwood Forest, an inquisitive teenager named Tina Negus convinced her family to make an impromptu detour.