NASA’s Perseverance rover has found complex carbon based molecules in ancient dried up river deposits on Mars, adding to growing evidence that the planet once had the...
Could we be on the verge of finding a second Earth? Astronomers are searching the galaxy for a world that could support life as well as, or perhaps even better than, our...
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...
Since the beginning of time, Earth has created life and then wiped out most of it in catastrophic, ultra-destructive moments. Starting with the very first extinction...
Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life...
Let’s say you’ve got two bottles of water in front of you. One is a plastic bottle, the other a reusable one. You already know that you should probably pick the reusable...
If modern snakes already make your skin crawl, you should be thankful you never had to share the planet with their prehistoric ancestors. Millions of years ago, Earth...
If a human could somehow approach Saturn, the experience would be unlike anything in our Solar System. From a distance, the planet looks calm and elegant, wrapped in its...
You just fell into a pool with this thing. What is this? How would falling in here affect your health? And could you actually survive this? This is a spent nuclear fuel...
What if all the oceans disappeared from the Earth’s surface? What would a world with no high seas look like? What would happen to all the creatures that...
Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. Again? Wednesday. I feel like we’ve done this before. Wednesday. Does anybody else notice this? Wednesday. How do...
We visit a lot of planets here on WHAT IF, but K2-141b is the most extreme one yet. Are you ready to jump on board this one-way space shuttle? If you’d rather stay...
What if all the coral reefs died out? What if we lost all of our coral reefs overnight? Ocean diving would become less impressive, that's for sure. But what about the...
Space tourism is much closer than you may think. The International Space Station will soon retire from its successful run through low Earth orbit. But humanity’s...
What if all the stars disappeared tomorrow, together with all the planets, solar systems and galaxies? What would be left of the Universe if it suddenly collapsed...
Do you long for an elegant weapon from a more civilized age? Something less clumsy and random. As you hone your sensitivity to the Force, you may wonder. What if...
Proxima b is very promising. It orbits a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri in a system with three stars in it. Proxima Centauri is small. It only has between 7.5%...
For more than a century, one of history’s greatest technological mysteries sat hidden beneath the sea. When historians began studying a strange collection of...
Betelgeuse is one of the closest stars to Earth, at a distance of only 650 light-years away. This makes Betelgeuse a fan-favorite with professional and amateur...
Beneath the Earth’s surface lies the core, a scorching sphere of iron surrounded by a layer of molten metal. Temperatures at the core reach approximately 6,000°C...
