This not-so-little piece of equipment could change astronomy forever. And it could be about to find alien life. Maybe in a matter of days. What is this powerful new tool...
Imagine being able to sunbathe all day long. But instead of getting a nice tan to show off… You turn green! And get lazier. Don’t worry. It’s not the...
In a few billion years, our Sun will become so violently hot that it could wipe out all life in the Milky Way. Yet, paradoxically, the same star that could destroy life...
Volcanic eruptions can be devastating. So what if we took extreme actions to prevent them? How could we drill into a volcano? What would be the benefits of doing this...
Returning for a second term in office, President Trump promised to crack down on illegal immigration using ICE – the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement...
Human beings have existed for 300,000 years and have managed to live in many unstable environments. We’ve survived ice ages, devastating pandemics and world wars...
Flooding, devastation, and disease. What could all these awful things have in common? Rain. And lots of it. We’re not talking April showers here. So, imagine a...
What if you had the power to control things without touching them? What if you could use your mind for anything from bending spoons to lifting cars, and even stopping...
Fifty-eight million years ago, the most dangerous snake to ever exist roamed the Earth. It was the apex predator of its time,terrorizing everything in sight. In one...
It might sound like a scene from a science fiction movie, but the threat of an asteroid hitting Earth is more realistic than you might expect. One asteroid in...
With nearly eight billion people on the planet, things can feel pretty crowded. Let’s make things a bit tighter by housing every single person on Earth in one giant...
The night is dark and stormy at the beach. A crowd prays to the thunder in the skies. All hail the god of chaos, who sleeps no more. Cthulhu, the great, green, bringer...
It begins with a single speech. Newly inaugurated for a second term, Donald Trump steps in front of cameras at the White House and announces sweeping economic measures:...
Black holes are the gravitational monsters of the Universe. They are so powerful that nothing, even light, can escape their grasp. One black hole is bad enough. But if...
A sudden reduction in size, shrinking by one centimeter per second, would expose a human to progressively smaller scales of the natural world, from ordinary objects to...
Billions of years ago, another planet smashed into Earth. An event of this epicness could have created our Moon. It also could have brought alien life to our planet...
Forget everything you know about the United States of America. It is not united anymore, but divided into several independent nations. No, this isn’t the result of...
From space, it would look like Earth had a giant pimple. Smack dab in the middle of Brazil. Back on the ground, you’d be astonished by the enormity of Olympus Mons. The...
Today on What If, we’re going to build the highest bridge on planet Earth. Welcome to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the “Roof of the World.”It’s home to the world’s...
Scientists have pieced together a pretty clear picture of what life was like on Earth thousands, even millions of years ago. If you fast-forward one million years from...
