Official time in Canada is the second kept by the National Research Council in Ottawa, tied to Coordinated Universal Time. Legal time — the hour a school, court, or bus schedule uses — is set by provinces and territories. A phone can disagree with both for a while after a law changes, because phones follow…
Jealousy arrives like a verdict. In the moment it feels certain: someone is taking what is yours, or is about to. Science treats it more narrowly. Jealousy is a reaction to a perceived threat that a third person will take or change a relationship you already have. That is why psychologists separate it from envy….
Rock salt does not heat the ice. It makes a brine that freezes colder than water, and that brine has a floor. On a real driveway or road, ordinary sodium chloride is already a poor bet around –9°C. The bag most people buy is sodium chloride. In a lab, a perfect mix of that salt…
The water cycle, also called the hydrologic cycle, is the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of Earth. The total amount of water on the planet has remained essentially constant for billions of years. What changes is its form and location. Water exists as liquid in oceans, rivers, lakes, and soil;…
A star spends its life in a contest between two forces. Gravity pulls its gas inward. Pressure pushes back—first from heat, then from nuclear fusion in the core. For most of the star’s life those forces stay in balance. Astronomers call that balance hydrostatic equilibrium. When the fuel runs out, the balance breaks. What happens…
The question “Are we alone in the universe?” has fascinated humanity for millennia. From ancient philosophers to modern astronomers, the idea of alien life sparks wonder and speculation. Yet, despite decades of exploration, one fact remains crystal clear: scientists have found no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial life—microbial or intelligent—anywhere beyond Earth. What we do know…
We all grew up believing trees grow out of the soil. Roots reach into the dirt, pulling up what they need to build towering trunks, branches, and leaves. But modern science reveals a far more surprising truth: the vast majority of a tree’s “dry mass”—the solid structural material left after removing water—comes from carbon dioxide…
Artificial intelligence is transforming our world, but it comes with a surprising cost. Discover how much water AI really uses, the massive electricity demands of data centers, and the other resources powering modern AI.
Roughly 12,800 years ago, Earth hit a climatic brick wall. The Younger Dryas—a 1,200-year deep freeze that derailed the post-Ice Age warmup—has long been wrapped in a neat little bow: melting glaciers flooded the Atlantic, stalled ocean currents, and turned the thermostat down. It’s a story the scientific establishment has clung to like a security…
Few scientific pursuits carry as much long-term potential as nuclear fusion. Often described as the process that powers the Sun and stars, fusion represents one of humanity’s most ambitious goals: generating large-scale, clean energy by combining light atomic nuclei. While still in the experimental and demonstration phase, fusion research has made encouraging progress in recent…