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...
An unexpected guest has made its way into our Solar System. It’s an interstellar object, an ISO. And it’s tumbling through space in a way that can’t be explained by...
Neuralink is an American company started by ohhhhh, let’s just say “well-known public figure” Elon Musk. Launched back in 2017, its mission was to...
Imagine an enormous football stranded in the Solar System. I mean, the Earth shaped like one. What could cause our planet to change its shape so drastically? And what...
Despite being “black” and a “hole”, a black hole is not a dark, empty space. In his theory of relativity, Einstein predicted how black holes are...
If the Earth had an edge, I hope it would look like this. The edge of a flat Earth. I know, I know, we’ve talked about it before. But there’s something...
Prehistoric Australia was not the sunny, laid back continent we know today. Between 126,000 and 12,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene era, humans shared the land...
Today on What If, we’re taking Jupiter’s deadly gases and unleashing them on Earth. Where could you be safe from these toxic winds? How would you breathe...
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...
Once that missile launches, you can’t escape what’s coming next. But what are you facing? Four types of energy are about to be unleashed. First, a blast wave...
Underneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet lies one of the planet’s greatest mysteries. What would happen if every last piece of ice on the southern continent suddenly...
They can endure the cold reaches of space. Go without food or water for up to 30 years. And are nearly indestructible. But they’re, like, really tiny. So, there’s not a...
This bug can survive anything, except maybe the bottom of your shoe. But what would happen if we squished every cockroach on Earth? How would this affect the food chain...
As much as we love to blow stuff up here on Earth, no bombs or pyrotechnics could compare to the incredible force of nature’s biggest explosion, the supernova. As...
Imagine drifting through space in a place so empty that you wouldn’t see a single star, planet, or galaxy in any direction. This is the Boötes Void, one of the largest...
Over 300 million years ago, before the age of giant dinosaurs, Earth was covered with giant insects. Imagine a world where dragonflies are the size of crows and...
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%...
Imagine if one day you looked up into the night sky, and saw Mars or Saturn where the Moon was supposed to be. That would sure turn our Earth into an alien world. And...
The Paleozoic Era represents one of the most transformative periods in Earth’s history, spanning approximately 289 million years from 541 to 252 million years ago...
Six hundred and thirty-five light years away from Earth, there is a world that seems to promise something almost unimaginable: a planet covered in a vast liquid ocean...
