There’s a giant, peanut-shaped object orbiting the Sun, and it’s name is Halley’s comet. Like all comets, it’s a cosmic mashup of frozen ice, gases, and dust...
Nuclear weapons have shaped global politics for decades, but their destructive power is almost impossible to comprehend. From the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945...
If time travel is possible, why haven’t we met a single time traveler yet? And if we did meet one, how would we know they weren’t faking it? What would their...
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...
[dx_custom_adunit mobile_id=”RTK_v1lP”] Science. It has saved billions of lives, allowed us to discover new worlds, and helped the world’s...
[dx_custom_adunit mobile_id=”RTK_v1lP”] What if Jupiter gained just a little bit more mass during its formation period, and then ignited to become a star...
Overnight, our planet has gone from a pale blue dot to a glistening white snowglobe. Stretches of Earth have become frozen wastelands that are completely inhospitable...
Imagine pulling into a drive through and seeing Woolly Rhino burgers on the menu. It might sound strange today, but thousands of years ago, our ancestors depended on...
Sharks are the oceans’ primary predators. Eating every fish in their path. But what if you ended up in a pool full of them, and you were the prey? What would...
Imagine that the Sun is on the verge of exploding. Or that a planet-killing asteroid is headed our way. Or maybe you just want to take the entire planet on a joy ride...
Do you get a little nervous before a flight? If you do, you’re not alone. Between 33% and 40% of people feel some form of anxiety when they board a plane. While a giant...
It’s been 30 days since Uranus first appeared in the sky. At first, it looked like our Moon had found itself a stellar partner. But then, we understood something...
Is it a meteor shower? Space debris? No, it’s something much, much worse. Our nearest neighbor is a full Moon no more. The Moon exploded and splintered into...
If you got into a spaceship, and traveled long enough and fast enough, could you eventually loop back to where you started? Assuming you don’t accidentally collide...
Neanderthal DNA is 99.7% identical to our own, and researchers claim that some humans might be carrying as much as 2% of the Neanderthal genome. Making things even...
Get ready for some serious burns and the instantaneous death of organisms. Let’s turn up the heat and bring the entire planet to a boil for five whole seconds. How would...
If you traveled to the deepest points of Earth, what would you find? Lost cities, mythical sea monsters, rivers of gold? Probably not. But there is still a lot to...
Billions of years in the future, the Sun will begin to die. And this is what our planet would look like. But what if we turn things up a notch or two right now...
What if climate change was taken to the absolute extreme and the entire planet’s ice melted?
