Venus, Earth’s closest planetary neighbor is one of the most extreme and hostile environments in the Solar System. With blistering temperatures, toxic clouds, and...
December 9, 2019. Whakaari, better known as White Island, sits about 48 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island, steaming quietly the way it has for...
What do you get when you mix the cuteness of a seal with the fierceness of a leopard? You get this adorable but dangerous predator. So the next time you go to...
Most of us grew up learning that humans have five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. These senses help us experience the world every day, whether we are...
As you’re waiting in line to deposit your paycheck, you see a group of people entering the bank, demanding money and threatening to kill everybody if they...
Forty light years from Earth, there is a world that looks a lot like Venus. But unlike the most sweltering, hellish planet in the Solar System, this not so distant...
Every animal on this planet lives at our convenience. We decide which ones get eaten, which get displayed behind glass, which sleep on the sofa, and which get hunted for...
With every rocket we launch into the Earth’s orbit, we’re trapping ourselves on our own planet. Wait, how could sending rockets into space put an end to...
Two animals. One patch of territory. Neither has any interest in sharing it. That’s the whole setup, and it’s not a hypothetical scenario dreamed up for...
Nearly four decades on, Chernobyl still doesn’t behave like other historical sites. The buildings are standing. The schools still have desks in them. The forests...
Almost 75% of the world’s tornadoes occur in the United States, which means that about 1,300 tornadoes hit the U.S. every year. Most of these tornadoes occur between...
Get your bone flute and gather around the fire. Today on What If, we’re taking you back to the time of woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. That’s right...
For decades, we believed our Solar System ended with Neptune, followed only by icy debris and distant dwarf planets. But recent observations hint that something much...
Imagine the Sun releasing a burst of energy so powerful it could knock out power grids, stop airplanes mid flight, and push our world back into the dark ages. This is...
They sent humans to walk on the Moon, flew by every single planet in our Solar System, delivered the first residents to the International Space Station… What else could...
This is an F5 tornado, and it’s one of nature’s most destructive forces. Could you survive being sucked in? Yeah, imagine getting scooped up like a meat...
Two thousand six hundred meters below the surface, where sunlight has not reached for millions of years, something is looking back at you. Pale. Translucent. Drifting...
Buckle your seatbelts. We’re about to take a ride on the cosmic superhighway. What exactly are these celestial autobahns? How would they help us explore the furthest...
It’s a beautiful night. Just you, a bottle of wine and your partner drifting through the cosmos in a UFO. As your caress their green skin, you know that...
Black holes are one of the most devastating objects in space, sucking up everything around them. But there’s another space phenomenon that’s just as...
