NASA’s Long-Awaited Image of Pluto

Nearly a decade ago, NASA launched its New Horizons spacecraft into space, tasked with exploring our vast solar system and sending information home. After over three billion miles of flight, it has finally reached its ultimate destination: Pluto. Until now, details of the controversial dwarf planet have only been speculative—often describing it as oblong and gray—but information from New Horizons’ up-close encounter tells a different …

The Evolution of Seinfeld

Seinfeld—a show in which almost nothing seemed to change episode to episode, season to season—actually evolved more than even the most dedicated of viewers might have noticed. In this article on Slate, readers are shown a series of graphs that explain the changes in the show—from pace to secondary characters and even “the rise of Kramer.” A typical episode in the first season contained about …

Sending Emails to Trees

In 2013, the city of Melbourne, Australia assigned trees identity numbers and email addresses, making it possible for citizens to report dangerous branches or other problems that trees in their city may face or cause. However, what began as a program to benefit the city turned into something very different when people began to write thousands of emails to their favorite trees about everything and …