The Atlantic’s Science, Technology, and Health desk has had a busy 2025: Our writers have spent the year probing the limits of human consciousness and gene-editing technology, studying the ubiquity of microplastics, investigating the origins of a mysterious ALS outbreak, and even chasing down rubble from the White House’s demolished East Wing. Our reporting has led us to a number of strange and delightful facts. In a year defined by slop, we hope these nuggets of reality inspire some genuine awe:
- On average, women’s hands are more sensitive to warmth than men’s, some research suggests.
- The U.S. releases 100 million sterile flies in Mexico every week.
- A sea-slug species called Elysia chlorotica appears to perform photosynthesis. The slug eats algae, turns bright green, and spends the rest of its life converting light, water, and air into sugar, like a leaf.
- The jingle for Pepsi-Cola was the most recognized tune in America in 1942, according to one survey.
- Satellites can spot the hot breath geysering out of a single whale’s blowhole.
- Some AI doomers aren’t saving money for retirement. If by then the world is fully automated (or we’re all dead), why bother with an IRA?
- Scientists discovered—or created, depending on your perspective—a new color named “olo” this year. (Those who have seen it describe it as a sort of teal or a mix of blue and green.)
- Modern potatoes likely descended from an ancient tomato plant.
- By one calculation, spending on AI accounted for 92 percent of America’s GDP growth in the first half of 2025.
- This year, a baby with a rare genetic condition became the first child to receive a customized CRISPR gene-editing treatment to fix his specific DNA mutation.
- During the late 1800s, baseball players experimented with four-sided bats.
- And in the early 1970s, Little League tried to prevent girls from playing baseball by saying that being hit with a ball could cause breast cancer.
- On a single day in 1900, a former schoolteacher destroyed three saloons using bricks, rocks, and a billiard ball—all to advance the cause of temperance.
- When the New Jersey Meadowlands was a dump site, it accepted rubble from the London Blitz and the Doric columns of New York’s old Penn Station (along with toxic manufacturing sludge and standard garbage).
- Amtrak trains couldn’t run between Albany and the Berkshires for several months this year because of a six-foot-deep sinkhole.
- Insects likely make up more than half of all animal species, but roughly 80 percent have never been documented by researchers.
- Malibu has a flock of wild parrots that may descend from pets that escaped homes during a fire in 1961.
- A hawk learned how to use crosswalk signals as a cue to ambush its prey
- A Danish study from 2018 found that tennis players lived longer than swimmers, cyclists, and joggers.
- The winners of the Academy Award for Best Cinematography from 2011 to 2013 were all 3-D movies.
- Some veterinarians recommend sunscreening pets—especially light-colored dogs.
- An army of robot dogs inspects cars in a Georgia Hyundai factory.
- There might not be enough fruits and vegetables in the world to allow the American food industry to switch entirely to natural dyes.
- The United States’ first-ever racially integrated baseball league for women will begin playing in the spring of 2026.
- There are an estimated 25,000 city-killer-size asteroids in near-Earth orbits and just under half have been found.
- In 1972, about one in five people who died in the U.S. received an autopsy. That rate has since dropped below one in 10.
- The word cooties initially referred to lice and other biting insects that American soldiers encountered during World War I.
- An ALS outbreak in a tiny French town may have been caused by wild mushrooms.
- Eggs are naturally seasonal.
- Because oranges from different regions can taste so different, orange-juice manufacturers blend batches of juice to maintain a consistent flavor profile, much like wine and whiskey makers do.
- In the 19th and early 20th centuries, so-called patent medicines sometimes contained explosives.
- The Baader 632 Thigh Filleting System can process 230 chicken thighs a minute.
- Fertility problems in men can often be overcome by treating a female partner, even if she doesn’t have any fertility problems of her own.
- The Animal Welfare Act’s definition of animal excludes fish, insects, cephalopods, and most mice and rats.
- A single weed vape can hold a whopping 5,000 milligrams of THC.
- In Japan, you can buy soy sauce laced with ostrich antibodies.
- When lettuce is contaminated with E. coli, washing it doesn’t do much good.
- Any inanimate object is fundamentally just a collection of atoms; a living organism might be better understood as a dynamic pattern playing out over time.
- A prescription-only system on an AppleWatch can detect if the wearer is having a nightmare. It vibrates enough to stop the bad dream but not enough to wake them.
- In 1999, a vegetative patient suddenly started talking after being put on Ambien.
- Saturn’s official moon count nearly doubled this year after scientists confirmed the discovery of 128 new satellites.
- Olive Garden’s signature “Tour of Italy” dish has 3,200 milligrams of sodium—more than double what the American Heart Association considers an optimal daily amount for adults.
- Ounce for ounce, turkey contains less tryptophan—an amino acid popularly blamed for post-Thanksgiving sleepiness—than cheddar cheese or an octopus does.
- One AI start-up spent $1.8 million to purchase the URL friend.com.
- Calling a loved one by their name makes some people feel anxious or nauseated.
- Body builders have long consumed an enormous excess of food to help build muscles, but they are learning that bulking often takes just 10 percent more calories than the body needs to maintain itself.
- Because of a global cocoa shortage, confectioners are tweaking recipes so that their candies don’t contain much chocolate—or any at all.
- LinkedIn has a “Videos for You” tab that essentially turns the app into corporate TikTok.
- Soap’s most important disinfectant quality may be that it makes your hands slippery, to loosen debris.
- A plastic-bristled toothbrush may add approximately 30 to 120 microparticles of plastic to your diet with each cleaning.
- Sorry: Plastic is also the source of basically everything that’s good about chewing gum—its durability, its stretch, its ability to form bubbles.
- According to cybersecurity experts, those sketchy texts offering a tax rebate or warning of an unpaid toll are likely orchestrated by a highly organized criminal syndicate based mainly in China and known as the smishing triad.
- Bronze-cut pasta is especially delicious, but making it creates enormous amounts of “pasta dust,” which must be cleaned up with extra labor and machinery.
- Tanning beds emit UVA rays that bronze (and damage) the skin, but little of the UVB rays that boost vitamin D production.
- Some researchers want to turn a crater on the far side of the moon into a natural radio dish.
