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...
This gigantic bat was captured on camera by a man filming his camping trip. He’s been missing ever since. Stories like these have been swirling the internet for...
The Earth may not be our home forever. Eventually, we may have to leave. What if instead of finding a potentially habitable exoplanet light-years away, we stayed in our...
When people imagine humanity’s future beyond Earth, Mars is usually the first destination that comes to mind. It is close, familiar in some ways, and has been studied...
The Stone Age started 2.6 million years ago and ran for nearly 2.5 million years. Across that span, our ancestors survived three ice ages, chronic shortages of food, and...
Nothing can travel faster than light. But what if we switched the rules a little? Imagine a world where the speed of light was slower. Way slower. Yep, about the speed...
Build a spacecraft that travels at the speed of light, the absolute ceiling of physics, and point it at this destination. You would arrive in 700 million years. And...
Deep beneath the surface of Mallorca, Spain, an experienced cave diver found himself facing a nightmare scenario. He was trapped hundreds of meters inside an underwater...
Space tourism is happening now. Soon enough, you might be able to take your own vacation into the cosmos. What would your travel experience be like? What would you see...
What would happen if the United States and China went to war? On one side, the U.S. stands as the most technologically advanced military force in the world, with...
Turn off one pipeline in Europe and the effects don’t stop at cold houses. They run through fertilizer production, then through food supply, then through global...
Scientists have a threshold for planetary destruction. An object roughly 96 kilometers wide, striking Earth, would wipe out every living thing on the surface. Jupiter...
Imagine waking up to headlines announcing that one of the largest mammals to ever roam the Americas has returned. After disappearing thousands of years ago, the giant...
Picture an entirely ordinary evening at home, disrupted without warning by a glowing chunk of space rock tearing straight through your roof. Glass sprays across the...
Somewhere in the far reaches of space, a giant hunk of rock is hurtling our way, just biding its time before an extinction-level impact with Earth. Before you run into...
Split every dollar on Earth evenly tomorrow morning, and the billionaires would start climbing back before the year was out. Not because of conspiracy. Because of...
Animal testing remains one of the most controversial parts of modern science. Every year, millions of animals are used in experiments designed to develop medicines, test...
Oxygen makes up only about 21 percent of the air we breathe, but it plays a much bigger role in holding life together and keeping our world intact. Imagine if, just for...
Instead of falling apart after a single crash, now we all have cars that are completely indestructible. Would there be fewer fatalities caused by car accidents? What...
Pluto has long been one of the most debated celestial bodies in our solar system. Once classified as the ninth planet, it was redefined in 2006 as a dwarf planet, a...
