Cool Finds

We Don’t Need a Huge Breakthrough to Make Renewable Energy Viable—It Already Is

The idea that renewable energy can't handle the load is a myth, says Amory Lovins

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Explore Native Alaskan Stories As a Young Iñupiaq Girl in This New Video Game

Never Alone draws on the art, stories and culture of Alaskan Inuit

An artistic depiction of the duck.

Copenhagen Might Install a Giant, Energy-Gathering Duck in Its Harbor

The duck would be both a tourist attraction and a means of helping the city become carbon-neutral by 2025

Bake Sales And Girl Scout Cookies Are Out; Bowl-a-Thons Are In

The then-and-nows of kids' food-related fundraising

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There’s an Easy (And Tasty) Way to Measure the Speed of Light at Home

You can make surprisingly accurate calculations using chocolate and a microwave

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Here's How Astronomers Actually Find Planets in Other Solar Systems

Astronomers have found 1,741 exoplanets. But how, exactly?

Fish Oil Could Be a Modern-Day Snake Oil

The premise that fish oil is good for your heart is based on questionable data

Siegfried Sassoon

These Diaries, of Poet Siegfried Sassoon, Capture the Chaos of WWI

Siegfried Sassoon's poems captured life in the trenches of WWI

Send Your Pets’ Remains To Space

A new service offers to launch your pet's ashes into space

Quentin Tarantino And Judd Apatow Agree: Kodak Film Can't Disappear—They Need It

Some of Hollywood's most famous directors are pressing studios to buy Kodak film—before it's too late

How Big Were Romans' Feet?

A bioarchaeologist proposes one method to answer that question

French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel with some of his works in Hong Kong, May 2014. The sculptures he is designing for Versailles have a similar pearl-strand shape.

For the First Time in 300 Years, a New Permanent Sculpture Will Grace Versailles

A fountain sculpture being installed on the grounds is intended to be the first permanent addition to the collection in centuries

The London as it looked before it blew up

In 1665, a British Warship Mysteriously Blew Up—And Soon We Might Know Why

349 years ago, the warship The London exploded in the Thames Estuary. Now archaeologists are trying to figure out why

If Certain Couples in Yemen Choose to Divorce, Their Siblings Must Get a Divorce, Too

"Swap" marriages dictate that both marriage vows and divorces must be evenly shared between siblings of two families

Natural Chocolate Is Actually a Reddish Color

Chocolate didn't turn brown until chemists got their hands on it

This half-albino redwood tree has swirls of green and yellowish-white, as well as male and female cones.

Rare Half-Albino Redwood Tree Is Safe, For Now

One rare, half-albino redwood in California was slated to be chopped down, but local outcry has saved it

Balan, the Blowpipe maker.

Meet One of the Last Bornean Elders Who Still Makes Traditional Poison Dart Blowpipes

It takes two days of constant drilling by hand to create a single pipe, which can be used to hunting animals

Lead from mining operations in Broken Hill, Australia, reached Antarctica before humans did.

Pollution Beat People to the South Pole

Before people ever made it to the South Pole, a pollutant had beaten us there

Giant pandas Hsing-Hsing (left) and Ling-Ling frolic at the National Zoological Park near Washington, DC. Photo circa 1974.

Don't Worry Mr. Nixon, the National Zoo's Pandas Figured Out How to Have Sex

President Nixon wanted to make sure Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing had enough time to "learn the ropes"

A baby chimp in the 1950s

This Guy Simultaneously Raised a Chimp and a Baby in Exactly the Same Way to See What Would Happen

When treated as a human, the baby chimp acted like one—until her physiology and development held her back

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