728 feet wideWeird but True
A routine map check found a new 728-foot crater on the Moon
McGetchin crater formed in spring 2024, but scientists found it later in a change map. The impact also left a 4-mile nighttime cold spot.
OMG desk
Weird but True
Strange, delightful, and unexpected stories that hold up after a closer look.
Latest from this desk
Stories worth opening
Every story starts with direct evidence, clear attribution, and imagery selected for the article itself.
728 feet wide
255 miles above EarthWeird but True
An astronaut photographed purple aurora from 255 miles up. Its color is a clue
The September 7 frame stacks city lights, white airglow and aurora above Central Asia. Different gases and altitudes make the colors.
164 votes to 1Culture
The UN voted 164 to 1 for maps that show Africa at its true relative size
The resolution encourages Equal Earth and other equal-area maps when size matters. It does not ban Mercator, a projection built for navigation.
41 days between viewsCulture
This Nunavut tundra changed color in 41 days. Peak autumn can last a week or less
Landsat 9 saw the same Coppermine River landscape on July 27 and September 6, as green tundra gave way to reds, oranges and yellows.
77 minutes in sunlightCulture
Apollo 11 held up a sheet of foil for 77 minutes. It came home carrying solar wind
Before Apollo 11 raised the flag, Buzz Aldrin aimed a 30-by-140-centimeter aluminum sheet at the Sun. The particles it trapped returned to Earth for analysis.
A lure with ordinary bonesAnimals
This viper flicks a fake spider at birds. Its tailbones look ordinary
X-ray computed tomography of the spider-tailed horned viper holotype found no specialized skeletal structure beneath the snake's elaborate bird-luring appendage.
18 km from sourceCulture
Tiny mineral grains traced Yorkshire’s Devil’s Arrows to rocks 11 miles away
Zircon and apatite fingerprints link Britain’s tallest surviving standing-stone row to Brimham Rocks, while regional ice-flow evidence rules out a glacier making that journey.
2.21 to 8.18 secondsAnimals
The opening moved. Sixteen elephants had to abandon the route that worked
A box-rotation experiment found that Asian elephants paused when a familiar opening changed direction, then improved as the new route became familiar.
5,000 solsAI & Technology
Curiosity reached 5,000 Martian days after climbing one vertical kilometer from its start
NASA’s Curiosity rover reached its 5,000th sol three days after gaining one vertical kilometer from its landing site, while examining a wind-shaped Martian ripple.
50 degrees of real-world dramaEntertainment
Star Trek’s famous alien rocks look like gray scratches from orbit
Landsat 9 turned a longtime science-fiction backdrop into a patch of curved gray stripes, revealing the real geology beneath the fiction.
About 1,000 targets at onceAI & Technology
This 10-metric-ton-plus instrument can sort light from about 1,000 cosmic targets at once
MOONS has made its first observations at the Very Large Telescope. Its robotic fibers feed two spectrographs housed inside one exceptionally cold machine.
A lava lake under the iceWeird but True
The red speck on this frozen island marks one of Earth’s rare persistent lava lakes
Landsat found heat at Mount Michael’s summit on August 24. Eight days later, the same volcano drew a V-shaped wake through the clouds.
3 planets in one frameAI & Technology
A NASA jet flew into the Moon’s shadow and caught three planets in one darkened sky
A cockpit camera aboard NASA’s WB-57 recorded the eclipsed Sun, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, and the bright world beyond totality in a single frame.
Details as small as 0.8 milesWeird but True
Pluto’s famous heart holds two geologically different landscapes. Enhanced color makes the divide hard to miss
A New Horizons portrait shows that Pluto’s bright heart shape contains two geologically different regions, including an unusually smooth western lobe.
210 by 140 light-yearsWeird but True
Hubble's new N44 portrait holds nearly half a million stars and one enormous hollow
The vast cavity was carved by stellar winds and supernovae. Along its compressed rim, another generation of stars is taking shape.
A cat with the wrong nicknameAnimals
The “American cheetah” was a puma cousin. In the Arctic, it likely ate fish
Ancient DNA places Miracinonyx beside the puma, while chemical evidence suggests its northern populations occupied an unexpectedly aquatic food chain.
Ten sides at the south poleWeird but True
Saturn already had a hexagon. Now astronomers have found a decagon at the other pole
The ten-sided atmospheric wave was faint in 2023, clearer in 2024 and unmistakable in 2025. Scientists still do not know how long it will last.
Four animals, one bathroomAnimals
Four rare peccaries moved into the National Zoo. They all chose one bathroom
The communal pile was not a keeper trick. It is natural behavior for an animal once known to science only from fossils.
50 states, one mapCulture
Every state's geology now fits inside one searchable federal map
A new USGS release adds Alaska, Hawaii and most U.S. territories to the same standardized digital view as the Lower 48.
216 yards of threadWeird but True
Smithsonian researchers are finding turtle nests with X-rays, plastic cups and 216 yards of thread
A Virginia field team followed 56 tagged eastern box turtles and found a difficult number waiting at the nests it located.
52.5 centimetersWeird but True
One gardener has broken the longest chili record three times. His latest reached 52.5 centimeters
Jürg Wiesli started at 45 centimeters in 2017, reached 50.5 a year later and returned with a longer cayenne in 2026.
17.12-inch earsWeird but True
Hank's 17.12-inch ears set the record for a living donkey
A veterinarian repeated the measurement before witnesses in Pennsylvania, then averaged the results for Guinness World Records.
76% fell to 25%Weird but True
With eight mating calls, female treefrogs chose the target only 25% of the time
A controlled experiment found that Cope's gray treefrogs became slower, less accurate, and more likely to walk away as choices multiplied.