Life's Little Mysteries: Science questions, answered

The human body has a number of mechanisms that prevent you from holding your breath until you suffocate.

Being a Roman gladiator was a bloody business, but did all gladiators really fight to the death?

No one knows for sure when steel was invented, but some of the earliest examples crop up in the first millennium B.C. in Central and South Asia.

Cats can squeeze through impossibly small holes, but how does their anatomy enable them to do this?

The "fastest evolving vertebrate" title is hotly contested, but here are a few contenders.

When the brain "juggles" information, things can fall through the cracks.

Soap has a pretty simple formula and a long history.

Measuring the pace of evolution is tricky, but some species can evolve as quickly as a few generations.

Antarctica is covered by a miles-thick ice sheet, but was that always the case? And when was the coldest continent ice-free?

The special chemistry of this shiny iron alloy creates a protective layer on its surface that prevents it from rusting.