In 2025, Popular Science continued its mission to demystify our strange world for millions of readers. We've debunked the myths about baby birds and garbage spots. We've answered your wildest questions, from how airplane toilets work to why you don't remember all your dreams. And hopefully we presented stories that informed and entertained. Using a secret formula of traffic data, social engagement and curatorial flair, we've selected 26 stories that have delighted you, dear reader, this year.
In the 1920s, Raditor promised to cure everything from wrinkles to leukemia, but his unexpected results proved deadly.
Archaeologists remain baffled by a surprising, seemingly ahistorical find located deep in the Canadian desert. But after years of research, analysis and historical evidence, an interdisciplinary team has finally made its findings public. Hidden in the woods about 465 miles northwest of Ottawa, the massive stone slab is adorned with a hand-engraved rendition of the complete Lord's Prayer. But the religious text is not written in French or English – it consists of more than 250 characters from the oldest known runic alphabet.
For most people, the word “prepper” conjures up images of someone who, at best, has too much time on their hands and, at worst, spends too much time tracking conspiracies on the Internet. But while you might not want to fill your backyard bin with canned food (or, frankly, don't), the truth is that it's almost certainly time for you to do a little prep.
Brazil's Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas (National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples, or Funai) estimates there are about 100 uncontacted indigenous groups still living deep in Amazon rainforest. But on February 12, a man from one of these communities decided to meet with his neighbors.
Playful polar bear. Helpless robber fly. And two hippos fight in the golden light.
Researchers have found a new creative solution for tracking snakes.
In 1886, ornithologist Frank Chapman went birdwatching in the shopping district of uptown New York, but he wasn't looking for live birds. He wanted to see how many different birds he could find on people's hats.
He counted 542 hats decorated with details from 174 different species of birds. This was not unusual: 19th-century women were obsessed with elaborate feathered hats depicting everything from woodpeckers and blue jays to heron feathers, vulture wings and entire stuffed birds. Heron feathers were especially prized at $32 an ounce (twice the price of gold) because they only grow during the nesting season. During this vulnerable period, hunters destroyed entire colonies, wiping out two generations at once.
Enter Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall, two Boston socialites who read about the killing of a heron and decided enough is enough.
Azure waves splash against huge piles of garbage. Mountains of garbage towering over the sea. A thick crust of mud covers the surface of the ocean. Striking images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) are easy to find. The problem is that these images of GPGP are misleading and hide the truth about the contents of GPGP, its origins and the threat it poses to our ocean life.
Experts and sleep researchers have agreed that the best thing to do would be to simply abandon the idea of daylight saving time and return to Old Standard Time (“ST”) throughout the year. But there's another possibility: what if there was daylight saving time all year round?
This actually happened in the mid-1970s.
The design is amazingly simple and amazingly smart.
The National Archives needs help from people with special skills in reading cursive. The Bureau of Records is seeking volunteer citizen archivists to help them classify and/or transcribe more than 200 years of handwritten historical documents. Most of them date from the Revolutionary War era and are known for their flowing, flowing handwriting.
While filming a documentary in Northern Ireland, a team of scientists discovered a new fungus that appears to manipulate the behavior of spiders and turn them into “zombies.”
Nature is cruel, majestic and enchanting. Sometimes it's also a little silly.
The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards has released 17 never-before-seen entries for its 2024 competition, celebrating the lighter side of the animal kingdom. From a mother orangutan unfazed by her baby's antics to the palm of a brown bear cub's face, these photos will make you say “family.”
For over a century, simple lactic acid bacteria have been one of the most trusted additives in keeping food and beverages safe. It is added to butter, cheese and other dairy products to extend their shelf life. Now a team in Denmark has discovered some of the earliest examples of conservation aid. Their findings emerged only after an accidental discovery hidden in the depths of a university basement.
It's a bird! No, it's a plane! No, this is your hat, torn from your head by a gust of wind, carried away into the unknown. It's happened to the best of us. The only thing left to do is buy another one before your face gets burned. Soon, the fate of your former hat, like everyone else, no longer matters, except for one special team in Yellowstone National Park.
This year, National Park Service geologists in Yellowstone discovered more than 300 lost hats from hydrothermal zones.
This happened in 1859. Today it would be a disaster.
Choosing what to wear in fall or spring can be difficult. The weather may be warm in the morning, but by afternoon it will feel more like summer heat. Or temperatures may start out with a bitter winter cold and then suddenly warm up. It can be difficult to see 60 or 65 degrees Fahrenheit during the morning forecast and accurately predict what it will look like. There is actually a meteorological and biological reason why the same temperature can feel different depending on the season.
IN Popular ScienceWe've been publishing our prestigious Best of New list since 1988. Our enthusiasm for revolutionary innovation goes back even further to May 1872. For 153 years, we have celebrated the science and technology that shape our daily lives and move humanity forward.
A World War II aircraft carrier sunk by Japanese forces at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean contains unexpected cargo: a mysterious car. Now NOAA researchers want the public's help identifying a vehicle inside the remains of the USS Yorktown. The discovery was made April 19 during a remote deep-sea survey of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
If you wake up hungry and sick every morning, one man may have all the answers you need: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Kellogg, famous for creating Kellogg's Corn Flakes, introduced the so-called incandescent electric light bath. This innovation, which used light bulbs as light therapy to affect the body, laid the foundation for the modern infrared sauna. The purported benefits of an infrared sauna promise many things – from warming up our limbs to detoxifying the body – and the market is growing rapidly these days, expanding the options inside health clinics and for the home. But can infrared saunas relax muscles, reduce stress and flush out toxins?
From the outside, the presidential jet is not much different from a Boeing 747 commercial jet, except for the large “United States of America” lettering running along its side. The real differences are hidden under the hood.
It is a myth that parents will reject a lost chick because of human scent.
Earlier this year, while boarding a flight from Houston, Texas, I noticed that my slightly overstuffed and bulging backpack wouldn't fit in the space between my legs. I leaned over, trying to put it in place, but found that I could not reach the floor of the cabin without hitting my face on the seat in front of me. For a brief, heartbreaking moment, I was stuck looking like Mythbusters attaching the dummy to the impact. Have airplane seats always been this cramped? Or have I just gotten a lot bigger?
It turns out I wasn't alone. Almost everyone I've talked to since then has had a similar thought. They claim that seats on airplanes have definitely gotten smaller. Experts interviewed by Popular Science confirm this hunch: Some seats are indeed shrinking, even though passengers are increasing on average. Meanwhile, airlines are capitalizing on minimum seat size rules to accommodate more people on each flight. Result? Higher revenues for leading carriers and presumably cheaper tickets.
Originally used for radar and other technologies, microwave power was first used specifically to heat food in 1947. By the late 1960s, commercial microwave ovens were small and inexpensive enough to become an integral part of the modern kitchen. And by the 1970s, scientists began to wonder how this form of electromagnetic radiation might affect the food it heats. Foods cooked in the microwave have a different texture and flavor than other cooking methods. So what happens to the nutrients in food when it is nuked in the microwave?
Whether you remember them or not, you probably have dreams every night.
More than a dozen vintage planes are currently scattered throughout an airplane graveyard in northern Wyoming. If you can drive about 85 miles east from Yellowstone National Park to Big Horn County, relics like the Lockheed P-2 Neptune can be yours for as little as $25—just don't expect them to fly away with any of your new purchases.
PopSci Gift Guide for 2025
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