Even if an art museum featuring portraits of legendary singer Frank Sinatra and Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe is not your idea of fun, you may want to give Candytopia a chance. That’s because, in this museum, everything is made from candy! The best part? There is no need to find a “Golden Ticket” to gain admission to this real-life Willy Wonka world that is making its way around the US — tickets can be purchased online, or in-person at the venue....

NASA’s ambitious mission to “touch” the Sun got underway at 3:31 a.m. EST on August 12 with the launch of the Parker Solar Probe from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Within six weeks, the spacecraft, which is currently traveling at 39,500 miles per hour, will conduct the first of seven flybys of Venus and use the planet’s gravitational pull to catapult itself closer to the Sun. The process, known as gravity assist, is instrumental in the probe’s mission to reach our fiery star....

The most noticeable difference between the modern human face and that of the hunter-gatherers, who lived on Earth over 200,000 years ago, is the forehead. While we now have flat, smooth foreheads with visible eyebrows, our ancestors sported a pronounced brow ridge. Experts have always believed that the thick rim, and the evolution to the beautiful tufts of facial hair, served a physiological function. Now, a team of scientists from UK’s University of York and Portugal’s Universidade do Algarve suggest the distinct facial features help with our social relationships....

Researchers have always maintained that Triassic dinosaurs were small, chicken-sized critters, and that it was not until the Jurassic period — about 180-million years ago — that massive herbivorous sauropods, like the Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, emerged. However, the discovery of a new dinosaur species in Argentina suggests that the animals achieved gigantism during the late Triassic period, about 30 million years earlier than previously believed....

Large predators are increasingly appearing in unexpected places — alligators in saltwater marshes, killer whales in rivers, and mountain lions far away from the closest mountain. Experts hypothesize that as successful conservation efforts increase the local populations of these predators, they are moving beyond their usual habitats in search of food. However, Brian Silliman, professor of marine conservation biology at Duke University has a different theory. He believes the animals are recolonizing habitats they lived and hunted in for centuries — before human activity pushed them to the brink of extinction, and long before researchers began studying them....

Archeologists had always assumed that our early ancestors began baking about 10,000 years ago, after they gave up their nomadic way of life and became farmers. The scientists hypothesized that the abundant grain harvests inspired ancient humans to mill the crop into flour and make bread. However, the discovery of the charred remains of a flatbread that dates back over 14,000 years seems to indicate humans began baking long before their transition to an agricultural-based life....

Every now and again, Mother Nature reveals a delightful surprise in the form of something unusual and remarkable. One such extraordinary occurrence is the recent discovery of an extremely rare hybrid between a melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin. The mammal was first sighted in August 2017 by a group of researchers on a two-week expedition to document marine life off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii....

There are numerous meteor showers throughout the year. However, few are as popular, or as reliable, as the Perseids. The celestial show, which occurs when Earth passes through the path of Comet Swift-Tuttle, usually starts in mid-July and continues until the last week of August. This year, the best time to view the event will be between August 11 to 13, when our planet traverses through the densest comet dust and the meteors are the brightest and most frequent....

The hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from motion sickness have a long list of activities they dread — and often avoid altogether. This includes long-distance airplane travel, road-trips, carnival rides, and, in the more severe cases, even certain movies and video games. However, if the French company Boarding Ring has its way, motion sickness sufferers will soon have nothing to worry about, provided they are willing to wear the goofy-looking Boarding Glasses!...

Though wildfires are a common occurrence during California’s hot, dry summers, the state’s biggest fires don’t usually strike until August. However, this year, the season started early, in February, with the Pleasant Fire that took about six weeks to contain and scorched over 2,000 acres. Since then, there have been over 20 blazes across the state. However, none have been as terrifying as the Carr Fire that is currently wreaking havoc in Northern California’s Shasta County....

Stargazers, get ready to witness the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st Century. On July 27, our moon will transform into a red orb for 1 hour, 42 minutes, and 57 seconds! The entire event, from the moment Earth’s shadow starts to fall upon the moon’s edge to the time when the bright full moon emerges, will take almost 4 hours. In comparison, this century’s shortest total lunar eclipse, which occurred on April 4, 2015, lasted a mere 4 minutes and 48 seconds, with a total duration of 1 hour and 40 minutes....

When it comes to brain power, bottlenose dolphins are second only to humans. The highly social animals are known to teach one another to tail walk, to help fellow dolphins in distress, and to even carefully prepare their food instead of instantly devouring it like most animals. Now, a new study indicates that male bottlenose dolphins maintain unique whistles, or ‘names,’ to enable them to recognize friends and rivals within their social group....

Over the years, American pizza restaurant chain Domino’s has come up with several smart marketing strategies to create brand awareness and increase sales. These include deploying a delivery robot, allowing customers to place an order with a pizza emoji tweet, and launching a “Tummy Translator” app which offered food recommendations based on the customer’s stomach rumbles. For its latest campaign, “Paving for Pizza,” the company is taking on a pressing problem – America’s cracked and pothole-ridden roads....

For most climbers, professional or amateur, summiting Mount Everest — Earth’s highest mountain above sea level — once is a crowning achievement. However, don’t tell that to Kami Rita, who scaled the peak of the treacherous mountain for the 22nd time on May 16, 2018 breaking the previous record of 21 successful ascents he shared with two fellow guides. And the veteran mountaineer is not done yet! Prior to embarking on the recent climb, the 48-year-old announced, “My goal is to reach the summit of Everest at least 25 times. I want to set a new record not just for myself but for my family, the Sherpa people and for my country, Nepal.”...

Depending on where you live, today — Thursday, June 21 — is the first day of summer or winter. Also known as the June solstice, it is the day when the North Pole is most inclined towards the sun, allowing residents of the Northern Hemisphere to enjoy the longest day of the year. Conversely, those living in the Southern Hemisphere will experience the shortest day of 2018....

Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego — Spanish for fire volcano — came alive on Sunday, June 3, billowing gas, fire and ash more than 15,000 feet in the air. The volcano’s most violent eruption since 1974 caused widespread chaos and destruction. The initial death toll of 110 increased to over 300 on June 17 after officials, citing dangerous conditions, abandoned the search for the 200 residents who have been missing since the deadly incident. In contrast, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, which has destroyed over 700 structures since it began erupting on May 3, has yet to result in any casualties. Experts say the reason Volcán de Fuego is deadlier than Kilauea has to do with the formation of the two volcanoes....

An almost complete dinosaur skeleton, auctioned by Aguttes at the Eiffel Tower in Paris on June 4, is making headlines after it sold for an astounding $2.3 million, much higher than the $1.4 million to $2.1 million estimated by the French auction house. The steep price paid by a French art collector was justified given that the 150-million-year-old fossil, believed to be that of a new dinosaur species, is the only one of its kind discovered to date....

On Thursday, May 31, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani stunned the world when he beat crowd favorite and veteran competitor Naysa Modi to win the coveted Scripps National Spelling Bee championship. His winning word? Koinonia, an obscure word of Greek origin, which means “an intimate spiritual or Christian communion.” The Texas eighth-grader’s opportunity came unexpectedly in the first championship round after Naysa mixed up the single and double “s” in bewusstseinslage, a German-derived word which means “a state of consciousness or a feeling devoid of sensory components.”...

Pesky as they may be, ants are truly incredible creatures. In addition to talents like predicting earthquakes and morphing into rafts to save themselves from drowning during floods, the industrious insects go all out to protect their own, often carrying wounded comrades back to the nest to heal. Now, researchers have discovered ants who explode and sacrifice themselves to save their colonies from predators....

The quest to discover life outside of Earth has spanned decades and a multitude of galaxies. However, while breakthroughs like the discovery of liquid water on Mars and “Earth-like” exoplanets have raised hopes about the existence of alien life, the distance has made it hard to prove. Now, scientists believe the extraterrestrial life we have been seeking for so long may be on the planet closest to us — Venus....

While Fridays are always the best day of the week, June 1 promises to be even more special. That’s because it also happens to be National Donut Day, which means it is your civic duty to consume one, or even a dozen, of the delicious fried treats! Surprisingly, the holiday was not established by donut manufacturers to boost sales, but by the Salvation Army to help raise much-needed funds for the needy....

Commemorated annually on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day is a federal holiday set aside to honor the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces who have sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. This includes everyone who has served in the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard, Air Force, and the Coast Guard....

After successfully banning plastic bags, officials around the world are turning their attention to something we are all guilty of using for only a few minutes and disposing of without a second thought – plastic straws. According to ecostraw.org, over 500 million straws, enough to fill 127 school buses, are used just in the US, each day! Too small to recycle, they choke sea creatures, clog coral reefs, and eventually disintegrate into tiny microbeads which enter our food chain through fish. This means that every single straw ever produced in the world still exists in some form today. Now, thanks to social media campaigns such as #TheLastStraw and #TheFinal Straw, the urgency to ban plastic straws is finally gained momentum....

One would think that an elephant bird egg, the largest laid by any vertebrate ever — including dinosaurs and ancient reptiles — would be hard to miss for 80 years. Yet, that is precisely what Paige Langle at New York’s Buffalo Museum of Science discovered recently while inputting the institution’s extensive collections, many of which only exist on cards and ledgers, into the museum’s computer system....