Would you sleep in this earthquake-proof bed? It senses when an earthquake is happening and drops you into a safe metal chamber. Yes, we know how ridiculous this looks...
For decades, military planners have studied one of the most difficult questions in modern warfare: What would happen if the United States invaded Iran? The answer from...
Titan. The most majestic of Saturn’s many moons. And the most promising for life too. It’s got a beautiful view and liquid lakes on its surface. The only...
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...
An unusual visitor has entered our cosmic neighborhood. Scientists call these objects interstellar objects, or ISOs. Unlike asteroids and comets that formed around our...
The year is 2040. You hunker down with your fellow human survivors, listening for the sound of your enemy. The cyber-bugs have taken over. How did this happen? What...
Deep in the cosmic dark nature plays by a violent set of rules. Across the universe there are alien worlds that feel less like planets and more like torture chambers...
627 million km (390 million mi) from Earth, underneath the cold seas of Europa, a horrifying, and vastly intelligent creature lurks. Can our human minds even comprehend...
The Moon has always been a reassuring sight in the night sky. It controls the tides, stabilizes Earth’s rotation, and has faithfully orbited our planet for...
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...
If you ever find yourself falling into a volcano, there are a couple of things you should know. First off, when you reach the bottom, the magma’s not going to...
Neptune is big, it’s blue, and it is a planet that can tear you apart if you happen to drop into one of its massive, Earth-sized storms. While it might look calm and...
In an effort to fight climate change, the Sahara Desert could be going green… literally. Plans are being made to terraform the entire Sahara desert; changing it...
While it might be nice to avoid any dangerous confrontations on your wilderness walks, life without wildlife would be pretty boring. If we didn’t have animals...
At first glance, it sounds like something straight out of a bizarre science fiction movie. Tiny vehicles moving across a room, guided by unexpected drivers. But behind...
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...
Latin America today is not a single country, but a vast and diverse region made up of over 20 independent nations and territories spread across Central and South...
What’s shiny, liquid, conducts electricity and is also the surname of a legendary rock star? You guessed it, mercury. This naturally occurring element has a lot of...
Imagine stepping aboard a spaceship capable of traveling faster than light. Instead of spending months reaching Mars or thousands of years crossing the stars, distant...
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...
