One anthropologist found 1,072 similar words for ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ in the world’s languages. It turns out a mix of biology, culture and encouragement from parents explains this phenomenon.
It would be fun to be able to shrink people and objects, but it’s something we can only imagine.
Jasmin Merdan/Moment via Getty Images
The movies make it seem like someday we’ll be able to make people and objects grow really big or shrink really small. Whether this will be possible comes down to the smallest of things.
Robson, 1925, collected 2008, Ross Sea, Antarctica. Gift of the Ministry of Fisheries, 2007. Te Papa (M.190318)
The term ‘Big Bang’ might make you think of a massive explosion. Put the thought out of your head. Rather than an explosion, it was the start of everything in the universe.
When we yell, our vocal cords bash together extra hard, causing them to get sore and swollen. The swelling can develop over a few hours so you might notice hoarseness more the next day.
A natural color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker)