Stories by Life's Little Mysteries

Were you to open a plane window, the compressed air inside would rapidly rush out, atmospheric conditions inside and outside the plane would equalize, and everybody would die

A perfect storm engenders online rudeness, including virtual anonymity and thus a lack of accountability, physical distance and the medium of writing

Yelling into echo chambers, like narrow-cast web sites and cable TV, about issues such as gun control, instead of engaging in conversations with those who disagree, has led each of us to spin toward extreme views

External input makes eyewitness testimony unreliable. Eyewitnesses are generally unaware that their memory has been altered by post-event information

To start, get permission to keep what you find, find a barren spot like the Mojave Desert or Great Plains, and track down 'dark flight trajectories' from recent fireballs

The agency's Near-Earth Objects Program head points out many fallacies, including the claim that an imaginary planet will collide with Earth in December. Thousands of astronomers have not seen this

The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder

Collisions with air molecules slow a falling penny. Also, its flat shape contributes to air resistance. So it might damage your skull but not drill through it

The universe would be flat and featureless, says a University of Towson physicist. Harder: how about if gravity were switched off at a certain point after the universe formed?

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system initially claimed a phone service shut-down was performed by telecoms, but that's not the latest story