One August day in 1841, near Lebanon, Tennessee, two enslaved people heard the sound of rain pattering on the tobacco leaves around them. But this was no ordinary rain: It was a deep red color. The sky, it seemed, was raining blood. Even more alarming, small pieces of flesh and fat seemed to be raining
Even after decades of meteorological advances, weather forecasting remains infamously difficult. Today’s most trusted models are rarely accurate beyond a two-week window due to a constant cascade of atmospheric and climatic variables. These unpredictable meteorological interactions are the foundations of chaos theory. The interdisciplinary field studies how even the world’s most predictable systems can still
Two-thousand years ago, a Roman author and lawyer named Pliny the Younger wrote an account of one of the most destructive disasters in human history. He chronicled Mount Vesuvius’ eruption and the subsequent burial of Pompeii, which killed his uncle Pliny the Elder and about 2,000 others. The detail in Pliny the Younger’s account and
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Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. The weather forecast