How to Find a Meteorite in 5 Steps
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
Stories by Natalie Wolchover
NASA Crushes 2012 Mayan Apocalypse Claims
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...
Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel
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
Could a Penny Dropped Off a Skyscraper Actually Kill You?
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
Did Leonardo da Vinci Copy His Famous "Vitruvian Man"?
An Italian architectural historian thinks Giacomo Andrea de Ferrera, a Renaissance architect and da Vinci friend, drew the man-in-circle diagram first
Could the Internet Ever Be Destroyed?
The coming threats to the global Internet could take many forms
What If There Were No Gravity?
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?
Can Mountain Dew Really Dissolve a Mouse Carcass?
Evidence suggests citrus sodas can eat away teeth and bones in months, an issue arising after a claim of a dead mouse in a soda
New Theory Explains What Makes a Video Go Viral
According to an algorithm, the four ingredients required are congruency, emotive strength, network involvement and something called "paired meme synergy"
How Did BART Kill Cellphone Service?
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
