Capsule
DonateLog inCreate account
Menu

Navigation

  • Main page
  • Capsules
  • Learning
  • Mapping
  • Rankings
  • Organizations
  • Create
  • Forums
  • Research

Interaction

  • Messages
  • Verify
  • Help
  • About Capsule

Display

Appearance

Environment

EnvironmentsDefault
Capsule
Log in

Navigation

  • Main page
  • Capsules
  • Learning
  • Mapping
  • Rankings
  • Organizations
  • Create
  • Forums
  • Research

Interaction

  • Messages
  • Verify
  • Feedback
  • Help
  • About Capsule

Truth Classification

  • Fact
  • Theory
  • Hypothesis
  • Proven
  • Contested
  • Debunked
How classification works

Capsule of the Day

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

New in the Library

  • FactTardigrade
  • FactMonarch Butterfly
  • FactSpider

Capsule

© 2026 Solis Holdings Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Built by Solis Dev, a technology studio operating under Solis Holdings Group Inc.

  • Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Methodology
  • Corrections
  • Non-partisanship
  • Transparency
  • Developers
  • About
  • Discord
  • Sitemap

Capsule, the capsule-pill mark, and the clock logo are trademarks of Solis Holdings Group Inc. All content, source code, and design assets are the exclusive property of Solis Holdings Group Inc., unless otherwise noted. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

The library

Capsules

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

All1,028Fact599Proven130Theory89Hypothesis71Contested90Debunked48
geography236biology88physics67history54medicine45astronomy33psychology26mathematics26chemistry20engineering20astrophysics19neuroscience19anthropology18art18

Trending now

Most recent activity

Factbiology

Monarch Butterfly

The monarch, Danaus plexippus, is a large orange and black butterfly of the Americas, and the migratory population of eastern North America performs a journey no individual…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factbiology

Komodo Dragon

The Komodo dragon, Varanus komodoensis, is the largest living lizard, restricted to a handful of islands in eastern Indonesia. It grows to around three metres and 70 to 90…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Facteducation

Libraries

Organised collections of recorded knowledge, held for use. Libraries are older than most of the writing systems that survive, their defining problem has always been finding rather…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Fact

Browse all

Showing 461 to 480 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
Theory

The Social Construction of Reality

The social construction of reality is the thesis that much of what people treat as simply given about the world is in fact produced and sustained by…

byCapsule
biology

Spider

Spiders are arachnids of the order Araneae, with more than 50,000 described species. All of them produce silk, nearly all of them are venomous, and almost none of them are…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factmedia studies

Radio

Communication using electromagnetic waves without a conductor between sender and receiver. It was the first medium to reach a mass audience simultaneously, and it remains the…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Factbiology

Horse

The horse, Equus ferus caballus, is a large grazing mammal domesticated on the Eurasian steppe and, for roughly four thousand years, the fastest way a human being could travel…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Fact· Empirical

Komodo Dragon

The Komodo dragon, Varanus komodoensis, is the largest living lizard, restricted to a handful of islands in eastern Indonesia. It grows to around…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 7, 2026
Fact

Libraries

Organised collections of recorded knowledge, held for use. Libraries are older than most of the writing systems that survive, their defining problem…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 5, 2026

Also new

More from the last few days

biology
Fact· Empirical

Chimpanzee

The chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, is one of the two species of the genus Pan and, with the bonobo, the closest living relative of human beings. It is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Morden

Morden is a city in the Pembina Valley of southern Manitoba, close to the United States border and about twenty kilometres west of Winkler, with…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Thompson

Thompson is the largest city in northern Manitoba, roughly 650 kilometres north of Winnipeg on the Burntwood River, with 13,035 residents at the 2021…

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
economics
Fact

Banking

Institutions that take deposits and make loans. The central fact about banking is that it creates money rather than merely storing it, and almost…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Fact

Surgery

Treatment by physical intervention in the body. Surgery was limited for millennia not by knowledge of anatomy but by three specific obstacles, and…

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
medicine
Fact

Nursing

The care of the sick, injured and dependent. Nursing is the largest health profession by a wide margin, its outcomes are measurable and substantial,…

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
agriculture
Fact

Nitrogen Cycling in Prairie Soils of the Canadian Prairies

Nitrogen cycling in Prairie soils is a well-documented biological and chemical process that determines agricultural productivity across Manitoba,…

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
geography
Fact· Empirical

The Sahara

The Sahara is the largest hot desert on Earth, a sweep of sand, gravel, and bare rock stretching across northern Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to…

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
biology
Fact

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the molecule that carries the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning, and reproduction of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, stretching more than 2,300 kilometres along the north-east coast of Australia. So…

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
history
Fact

The Founding and Agricultural Development of Brandon, Manitoba

Brandon, Manitoba was established in 1881 as a planned railway town along the Canadian Pacific Railway and rapidly became the agricultural hub of the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Great White Shark

The great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, is the largest predatory fish, reaching about six metres. It is warm-blooded in a limited and…

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
chemistry
Fact

Water (H₂O)

Water is a chemical compound with the formula H₂O, consisting of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to one oxygen atom. Its bent molecular geometry…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Fact· Historical

French Revolution

The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of radical political and social upheaval in France that ended the Bourbon monarchy, abolished feudal…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Open questions

Hypotheses under investigation and ideas still debated

See all
earth science
Contested

What Killed the Dinosaurs

Around sixty six million years ago, the dinosaurs and many other forms of life suddenly vanished in one of the great mass extinctions in Earth's…

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
psychology
Contested

The Origin of Language

How human language first arose is one of the hardest questions in science. That we alone among animals possess full language is clear; when, how, 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
psychology
Contested

Nature versus Nurture

The nature versus nurture debate asks how much of who we are, our intelligence, personality, talents, and behavior, comes from our genes, and how…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
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

The Dyson Sphere

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that an extremely advanced civilization might build around a star to capture a large share of its…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrophysics
Contested

Dark Energy

Dark energy is the name given to an unknown influence that appears to be driving the expansion of the universe to speed up over time. It is thought…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Hypothesis

Panspermia

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe and is spread between worlds by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Hypothesis

The Riemann Hypothesis

The Riemann hypothesis is the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics. Proposed by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, it makes a precise claim about the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
neuroscience
Contested

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

The hard problem of consciousness is the question of why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience, the felt quality…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Contested

The Bronze Age Collapse

The Bronze Age collapse was a sudden, widespread breakdown of civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean roughly 3,200 years ago. Within a few…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
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
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
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
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
physics
Debunked

Perpetual Motion

Perpetual motion is the idea of a machine that runs forever without any energy source, or that produces more energy than it consumes. Inventors have…

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
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
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
criminology
Debunked

Criminal Profiling

Offender profiling infers a perpetrator's characteristics from crime scene evidence. The specific claim that it reliably narrows a suspect pool, and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geology
Debunked

The Expanding Earth

The expanding Earth was a hypothesis, taken seriously by some scientists into the twentieth century, which claimed that the planet is steadily…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
history
Debunked

Piltdown Man

Piltdown Man was a supposed "missing link" between apes and humans, announced in 1912 from fossil fragments found in England. For decades it misled…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
physics
Theory

Aerodynamics: How Flight Works

Aerodynamics is the study of how air flows around objects and the forces this creates. It is the science that explains how aircraft fly, how cars and…

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
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
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
biology
Theory

Cell Theory

Cell theory is one of the foundational ideas of biology. It holds that all living things are made of cells, that the cell is the basic unit of life,…

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

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
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
physics
Theory

Acoustics: The Science of Sound

Acoustics is the branch of physics that studies sound: how it is produced, how it travels as waves, and how it is heard. It bridges science and art,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism is the branch of physics that describes the forces between electric charges and the deep connection between electricity and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Theory· Mathematical

Game Theory

Game theory is the mathematical study of strategic decision making, where the outcome for each participant depends not only on their own choice but…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
science
Theory

The Gut-Brain Axis: Microbiome Influence on Mental Health

The gut-brain axis describes the bi-directional signalling between gut microbiota and the central nervous system via the vagus nerve, immune system,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
0 votes0 reviews
Aug 3, 2026
Contested

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In August 1971 Philip Zimbardo assigned twenty-four male students at random to be guards or prisoners in a simulated prison in a Stanford University…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

Broken Windows Theory

Broken windows theory holds that visible signs of disorder, such as broken windows, graffiti, and public drinking, signal that a neighbourhood is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

Does the Death Penalty Deter?

Whether capital punishment deters murder more effectively than long imprisonment is an empirical question that has been studied for over half a…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

Originalism

Originalism is the view that a constitution should be interpreted according to what it meant when it was adopted, and that its meaning does not…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Theory

The Rule of Law

The rule of law is the principle that everyone, including those who govern, is subject to law, and that power is exercised through known general…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

Natural Law and Legal Positivism

The central question in the philosophy of law is whether an unjust law is still law. Natural law theory says that at some point it is not: law and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

The Critical Period Hypothesis

The critical period hypothesis holds that there is a window early in life during which language is acquired readily and after which full acquisition…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Theory

Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European is a language nobody has ever heard, that left no written record, and whose vocabulary and grammar have nonetheless been…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

Universal Grammar

Universal grammar is the proposal that human beings are born with an innate, language-specific capacity that constrains the form any human language…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 3, 2026
Contested

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology proposes that the human mind, like the human body, was shaped by natural selection, and that many features of thought and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Contested

The Problem of Induction

The problem of induction is the observation that no amount of evidence logically guarantees a general conclusion. That the sun has risen every day so…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Contested

The Ship of Theseus

The ship of Theseus is a puzzle about identity over time. If every plank of a ship is replaced, one at a time, until no original material remains, is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Theory· Scientific

Behavioural Economics

Behavioural economics is the study of how people actually make economic decisions, as opposed to how the standard model assumes they do. Its central…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Theory

Keynesian Economics

Keynesian economics is the body of theory, originating with John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, holding that total spending in an economy drives output…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Contested

The Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons is the argument that a resource held in common will inevitably be destroyed, because each user gains the full benefit of…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Contested

The Efficient Market Hypothesis

The efficient market hypothesis holds that asset prices reflect all available information, so that it is not possible to consistently beat the market…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Contested

The Turing Test

The Turing test is a proposal, made by Alan Turing in 1950, for sidestepping the question of whether a machine can think. Rather than defining…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Proven· Mathematical Proof

Public-Key Cryptography

Public-key cryptography is the method that allows two parties who have never met, and who are communicating over a channel anyone can read, to…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Contested

P versus NP

P versus NP is the most important unsolved problem in computer science and one of the deepest open questions in mathematics. Informally it asks…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 2, 2026
Previous1…2223242526…52Next