What if the 3D world you see is just your brain’s best guess? The Schroeder stairs illusion reveals how flat retinal images become the 3D reality we perceive as our surroundings

Mercury would burn us and Venus would crush us; only Mars offers conditions that, though challenging, could support long-term human settlement.

Indulge in a sci-fi fantasy of living under the huge Saturn rings. Beware, the tidal forces would tear Earth apart and push life into the twilight zone

For millennia, we’ve looked to the stars for signs of our own end. Yet every so often, what looks like an omen of doom turns out to be a wonderful gift from beyond. When the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS drifted into our Solar System, it brought with it a cosmic time capsule containing tales older than the Sun.

Satellites don’t float; they fall. But they fall so perfectly sideways that they never hit the ground. The delicate balance between gravity and velocity allows them to circle Earth endlessly.

From evolution to artificial intelligence, we’ve built machines that mirror the brilliance of our minds, but not our hearts. The very thing that makes us truly human.