June 26, 1995 is a day the residents of Golf Manor, Michigan will never forget. On that day, hazmat-suited agents of the Environmental Protection Agency descended upon the quiet suburb and began systematically dismantling the garden potting shed of one Patty Hahn. When interviewed about the incident, most residents believed there had been some kind of chemical spill. But the […]

Looking back at the long and storied history of literature, film, and other narrative art forms, one trend becomes abundantly clear: writers love mental illness. From depression to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, psychiatric disorders have been used by artists for hundreds of years to heighten drama, make heroes more heroic, villains more villainous, and allow actors to flex their acting […]

Jean D. asks: Why do we need oxygen to live? Take a deep breath. Now repeat. Do this about 16 times per minute and you usually get all the oxygen your body needs. Every wonder why you need oxygen to survive in the first place? All life as we know it occurs because of how atoms and molecules interact with […]

Ashley K asks: How dangerous are rubber bullets? Utilised the world over, rubber bullets and stun guns are controversial additions to the arsenals of police forces and militaries due to their tendency to do the exact opposite of what they’re designed to do, rather than be non-lethal, occasionally killing the people they are leveled at. But how dangerous are they […]

At the end of James Cameron’s 1989 underwater thriller The Abyss, oil rig diver Bud Brigman, played by Ed Harris, dons an experimental diving suit in which instead of air he breathes a special oxygenated liquid. This allows him to avoid the lethal effects of extreme water pressure and descend to the bottom of a deep ocean trench to defuse […]

At 10AM on August 23, 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on leave from prison, walked into the Kreditbanken Norrmalmstorg bank in Stockholm, Sweden. Dressed in a wig with his face painted black, as he entered the bank lobby he pulled a submachine gun from under his coat, fired into the air, and yelled out: “The party has just begun!” Thus […]

In an oversimplified nutshell, cancer is, to quote cancer.gov, a disease “in which abnormal cells divide without control and can invade nearby tissues.”  Given its propensity to spread and divide in an uncontrolled manner throughout a person’s body, it brings up the question of whether it’s possible for cancer cells to make their way from one living thing to another […]

The portable nuclear weapon or “suitcase nuke” has long been a staple of popular fiction, appearing in dozens of movies, TV shows, and video games including The Peacemaker, 24, and Battlefield 3. Our fascination with such devices isn’t hard to understand, for they are the ultimate expression of our fears of nuclear terrorism: untraceable, easily concealed, and devastating. But is […]

Quantum mechanics is every Hollywood writers favorite handwavy tool to accomplish whatever they feel like in a given moment regardless of whether what they say or have happen has anything remotely to do with the reality of this branch of science and, well, reality. Beyond the masses, it is so NOT understood that even the likes of Richard Feynman, one […]

In May 1972, technicians at the Tricastin Uranium Enrichment Plant in France made an alarming discovery. A shipment of Uranium ore from the Oklo mine in the African nation of Gabon was found to contain only 0.71% of fissile isotope Uranium-235, instead of the 0.72% typically found in nature. This discrepancy, while small, was enough to set off alarm bells, […]

It is the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. A patient is dragged kicking and screaming by hospital orderlies and pinned to a gurney. A bite block is forced into their mouth, and a pair of electrodes placed on their head. Then, at the flick of a switch, hundreds of volts of electricity are passed through the patient’s head. This […]

On the beach just outside Grantley Adams Airport on the island of Barbados, five large naval cannons sit overgrown and rusting in the tropical heat, lying where they were abandoned fifty years ago. These relics are all that remain of Project HARP, an audacious 1960s attempt to launch satellites into space using giant guns – and of the grand ambitions […]

If you ever won a competition, chances are high that you want to do it again. So, if someone offers you an edge, temptation is high to use it, no matter the cost. May it be a drink from the gods or an injection by your coach – over the centuries there were a lot of things people used to […]

Childhood development is largely defined by vertical growth. For generations, parents have kept a story pole or even marked a door jamb with their kid’s height every birthday, or perhaps even several times per year. Whatever your height may be, and whatever height you’d like to be, one thing is certain: we can lose weight, we can dye our hair, […]

Magnets are everywhere. Just about every electronic device uses them including the speakers you’re using to listen to me talk right now. Deriving their name from the Greek Island of Magnesia, magnets have come to play an integral part of our modern world. As anyone whose ever watched a certain particularly powerful mutant of the villainous variety do his thing […]