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FactSurgeryTreatment by physical intervention in the body. Surgery was limited for millennia not by knowledge of anatomy but by th…

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The library

Capsules

1,028 capsules, each one classified by the strength of its evidence.

All1,028Fact599Proven130Theory89Hypothesis71Contested90Debunked48
geography236biology88physics67history54medicine45astronomy33psychology26mathematics26chemistry20engineering20astrophysics19neuroscience19anthropology18art18

Trending now

Most recent activity

Factepidemiology

Sanitation

The safe management of human waste. It has saved more lives than any medical treatment, it is the least discussed of the major public health measures, and roughly a fifth of the…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Factgeography

Steinbach

Steinbach is the third-largest city in Manitoba, about sixty kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, with 17,806 residents at the 2021 census. Founded by Mennonite settlers from the…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factgeography

Portage la Prairie

Portage la Prairie is a city in central Manitoba on the Assiniboine River, about eighty kilometres west of Winnipeg, with 13,270 residents at the 2021 census. Its name records…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026

Browse all

Showing 261 to 280 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
Debunked

N-Rays

A form of radiation announced in 1903 by the French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot, investigated in dozens of laboratories, described in around…

byCapsule
Facteconomics

Accounting

The systematic recording and reporting of financial activity. Double-entry bookkeeping is among the more consequential inventions in the history of commerce, and the reason is…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Factgeography

Winkler

Winkler is the fourth-largest city in Manitoba, in the Pembina Valley about twenty kilometres north of the United States border, with 13,745 residents at the 2021 census. Like…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factbiology

Albatross

Albatrosses are large seabirds of the family Diomedeidae, with the longest wingspans of any living bird and a way of flying that costs them almost nothing. They spend the…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Fact· Empirical

Steinbach

Steinbach is the third-largest city in Manitoba, about sixty kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, with 17,806 residents at the 2021 census. Founded by…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 7, 2026
Fact· Empirical

Portage la Prairie

Portage la Prairie is a city in central Manitoba on the Assiniboine River, about eighty kilometres west of Winnipeg, with 13,270 residents at the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 7, 2026

Also new

More from the last few days

geography
Fact· Empirical

Winnipeg

Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Manitoba, built where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet near the longitudinal…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Flin Flon

Flin Flon is a mining city on the Manitoba and Saskatchewan boundary, about 630 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, built directly on the rock of the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Ant

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae, with over 14,000 described species and an estimated global population around twenty quadrillion…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Platypus

The platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, is a semiaquatic egg-laying mammal of eastern Australia. It lays eggs, produces milk without nipples, detects…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
agriculture
Fact

Fishing

Catching aquatic animals for food. It is the last major food source still taken from the wild at scale, which is precisely why it is the one where…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Bat

Bats, the order Chiroptera, are the only mammals capable of powered flight. There are more than 1,400 species, roughly a fifth of all mammal species,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
art
Fact

Museums

Institutions that collect, preserve, study and display objects. What they display is a small fraction of what they hold, how they came to hold it is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Axolotl

The axolotl, Ambystoma mexicanum, is a salamander that never leaves the larval form. It reaches sexual maturity while keeping its gills and its…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

On this day

A birth or event with an anniversary today

history
Fact· Empirical

Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is a colossal copper statue on an island in New York Harbor, one of the most famous monuments in the United States and a…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Settled science

Verified facts and proven results

See all
geography
Fact· Empirical

Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is one of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth: an immense gorge carved by the Colorado River through the high plateau of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
engineering
Proven

Arc Flash Hazard Mitigation in Industrial Electrical Systems

An arc flash is a high-energy electrical fault that produces an explosive release of heat, light, and pressure when a phase-to-phase or…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Fact· Empirical

The Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the brightest object in our night sky. Large in proportion to its planet and close enough to study…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Lion

The lion, Panthera leo, is the only truly social cat and the second largest after the tiger. It once ranged from southern Africa through the Middle…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Elephant

Elephants are the largest living land animals, and there are three species rather than the two most references still give. They have the longest…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth, a vast sea of green covering some 5.5 million square kilometres across nine South…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Fact· Empirical

The Sun

The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System, a vast sphere of hot plasma whose gravity holds the planets in their orbits and whose light…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Proven· Replicated

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae, and certain bacteria capture the energy of sunlight and use it to turn carbon dioxide and water…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
science
Fact

CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing: Mechanism and Applications

CRISPR-Cas9 is a programmable nuclease that uses a guide RNA to direct the Cas9 enzyme to a specific genomic sequence, where it introduces a precise…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Fact· Empirical

The Solar System

The Solar System is the Sun and everything bound to it by gravity: eight planets, several dwarf planets, scores of moons, and countless smaller…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Fact· Empirical

The Colosseum

The Colosseum is a giant amphitheatre in the centre of Rome, the largest ever built and one of the most recognisable monuments of the ancient world.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Fact· Empirical

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is not a single wall but a vast, discontinuous system of fortifications, walls, watchtowers, garrisons, and beacon towers,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Open questions

Hypotheses under investigation and ideas still debated

See all
mathematics
Hypothesis

Goldbach's Conjecture

Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest and simplest sounding unsolved problems in mathematics. It states that every even whole number greater…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Hypothesis

Planet Nine

Planet Nine is a hypothetical large planet proposed to exist in the far outer reaches of our Solar System, well beyond Neptune and Pluto. It has…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Contested

The Multiverse

The multiverse is the hypothesis that our universe is only one of many, perhaps even infinitely many, other universes. It is taken seriously by many…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrophysics
Contested

How the Universe Will End

The ultimate fate of the universe is one of the deepest questions in science. Cosmologists have proposed several very different endings, and which…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
philosophy
Hypothesis

The Simulation Hypothesis

The simulation hypothesis is the proposal that the reality we experience might actually be an artificial simulation, such as an immensely…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Contested

Is Pluto a Planet?

Whether Pluto should be called a planet is a question that has divided astronomers and captured the public imagination. Discovered in 1930 and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
psychology
Hypothesis

Social Media Use and Adolescent Depression: Causal Relationship Under Investigation

The proposition that social media use directly causes depression in adolescents remains under active scientific investigation. While correlational…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Contested

The Fermi Paradox

The Fermi paradox is the puzzling contrast between the high apparent likelihood that alien civilizations exist somewhere in our vast galaxy and the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Contested

Are Viruses Alive?

Whether viruses count as living organisms is a question biologists have debated for over a century, and there is still no settled answer. Viruses sit…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Contested

Are Animals Conscious?

Whether animals have conscious experiences, an inner life of feelings and awareness, is a deep and genuinely contested question. That many animals…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
science
Hypothesis

Quantum Entanglement as a Substrate for Consciousness

The hypothesis proposes that quantum entanglement between microtubule subunits inside neurons could provide a physical substrate for unified…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
earth science
Contested

What Causes the Ice Ages

Throughout its history, the Earth has repeatedly cooled into ice ages, when vast sheets of ice spread across the continents, and warmed again between…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
astronomy
Debunked

Flat Earth

The idea that the Earth is flat is a debunked belief that the planet is a disc or a plane rather than a sphere. It has been contradicted by…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
education
Debunked

Learning Styles

The idea that each person learns best through a particular sensory channel, and that teaching matched to that channel improves learning. It is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
architecture
Debunked

The Golden Ratio in Art and Architecture

The golden ratio is a real and interesting number. The claim that it governs the Parthenon, the Great Pyramid, the Mona Lisa and the proportions of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Debunked

Alchemy

Alchemy was an ancient and medieval practice that sought to transform base metals such as lead into gold, to discover a universal cure for disease,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Debunked

Vitalism

Vitalism was the long held belief that living things contain a special, non physical "vital force" or "life energy" that animates them and that…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Debunked

Lamarckism

Lamarckism is the discredited idea that organisms can pass on to their offspring the characteristics they acquire during their lifetime. Its classic…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Debunked

Bloodletting

Bloodletting was the practice of deliberately draining blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness. For more than two thousand years it was one…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Debunked

Spontaneous Generation

Spontaneous generation was the long held belief that living organisms could arise directly from non living matter. People thought maggots formed from…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geology
Debunked

The Hollow Earth

The hollow Earth was the idea that our planet is not solid but hollow, perhaps containing a habitable inner world, or even inner suns and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Debunked

Astrology

Astrology is the belief that the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars influence human affairs and personalities, and that they can be used…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Debunked

The Martian Canals

The Martian canals were a network of fine, straight lines that some astronomers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed they…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
chemistry
Debunked

Phlogiston Theory

Phlogiston theory was an early explanation of combustion, widely accepted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It held that all flammable…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
medicine
Theory· Scientific

Germ Theory of Disease

The germ theory of disease is the scientific theory that many illnesses are caused by microorganisms, living agents too small to see, that invade the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Theory

Endosymbiotic Theory

Endosymbiotic theory explains the origin of the complex cells that make up plants, animals, fungi, and other higher organisms. It proposes that key…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory· Scientific

Special Relativity

Special relativity is the theory of space and time that Albert Einstein published in 1905. It revolutionized physics by showing that measurements of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory· Emerging

String Theory

String theory is a theoretical framework that attempts to unify all the forces and particles of nature, including gravity, into a single description.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
earth science
Theory

The Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is the process by which certain gases in a planet's atmosphere trap heat, keeping the surface warmer than it would otherwise…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Theory· Mathematical

Chaos Theory

Chaos theory is the branch of mathematics that studies systems whose behaviour is exquisitely sensitive to their starting conditions. Such systems…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrophysics
Theory

Stellar Evolution

Stellar evolution is the scientific account of how stars are born, live, and die over millions or billions of years. Though no one can watch a single…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Theory· Scientific

The Big Bang

The Big Bang is the prevailing cosmological theory of how the universe began. It holds that the universe started about 13.8 billion years ago in an…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Theory

Graph Theory

Graph theory is the branch of mathematics that studies networks of connected objects. A graph is simply a collection of points, called vertices,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Optics

Optics is the branch of physics that studies light: how it travels, how it interacts with matter, and how it can be controlled with lenses and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that describes the behaviour of matter and energy at the smallest scales, those of atoms and subatomic…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geology
Theory

Uniformitarianism

Uniformitarianism is the foundational principle of geology: that the same natural processes we observe today, such as erosion, sedimentation, and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
0 votes0 reviews
Aug 4, 2026
Theory

Modern Portfolio Theory

The framework, introduced by Harry Markowitz in 1952, that treats investment as a trade-off between expected return and risk measured as variance,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

Prospect Theory

A description of how people actually choose between risky options, proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 as an alternative to expected…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

Signal Detection Theory

The framework that separates how well an observer can distinguish signal from noise from how willing that observer is to say the signal is present.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

Transition State Theory

The account of chemical reaction rates that treats a reaction as passing through a specific high-energy configuration, the transition state, and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

BCS Theory

The microscopic explanation of superconductivity in conventional superconductors, published by John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

Band Theory of Solids

The account of why some solids conduct electricity and others do not, in terms of allowed and forbidden ranges of electron energy created by the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

Optimal Foraging Theory

The proposal that animals forage in ways that maximise net energy gained per unit time, because selection favours whatever feeding behaviour leaves…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

Life History Theory

The framework that treats an organism's schedule of growth, reproduction and death as an evolved allocation of limited resources, subject to…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Theory

The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution

The proposal that the great majority of genetic differences within and between species are not adaptive, but are changes with no effect on fitness…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Tides

The periodic rise and fall of sea level caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun acting unequally across the Earth. The cause has been…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

The Euclidean Algorithm

A procedure for finding the greatest common divisor of two whole numbers by repeatedly replacing the larger with its remainder on division by the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Chirality

The property of an object that cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, as with a left and a right hand. In chemistry it applies to molecules, and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

The Carnot Cycle

An idealised sequence of four reversible steps that a heat engine could in principle follow, and which no real engine can beat. Its efficiency…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Electrolysis

Using an electric current to drive a chemical reaction that would not happen on its own. It is the reverse of a battery, and it is how aluminium,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Surface Tension

The tendency of a liquid surface to contract to the smallest possible area, because a molecule at the surface has fewer neighbours to attract it than…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Diffraction

The spreading and bending of waves when they meet an obstacle or pass through an opening. It happens to all waves, it is the reason light does not…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Muscle Contraction

Muscle shortens because two sets of protein filaments slide past one another, driven by myosin heads that repeatedly attach to actin, pivot, and let…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Proven

Blood Clotting

The process that seals a damaged blood vessel, combining a physical plug of platelets with a mesh of fibrin produced by a cascade of enzymes. It has…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
Hypothesis

The Molecular Clock

The proposal that genetic differences accumulate at a roughly constant rate, so counting them dates the split between two lineages. It transformed…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 4, 2026
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