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Truth Classification

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How classification works

Capsule of the Day

DebunkedThe PolygraphThe instrument popularly called a lie detector, which records breathing, blood pressure, pulse and skin conductance dur…

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  • FactTardigrade
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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

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

Seahorse

Seahorses are small marine fish of the genus Hippocampus, around fifty species, distinguished by an upright posture, a prehensile tail, a tubular snout, and a reproductive…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factbiology

Sea Turtle

Sea turtles are marine reptiles of the superfamily Chelonioidea, seven living species that have been in the oceans for more than a hundred million years. They breathe air,…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Fact

Browse all

Showing 261 to 280 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
physics
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
biology

Hummingbird

Hummingbirds, the family Trochilidae, are small nectar-feeding birds of the Americas that hover in sustained flight and run the highest mass-specific metabolic rate of any…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factbiology

Tardigrade

Tardigrades, also called water bears, are microscopic eight-legged animals forming their own phylum, Tardigrada, with around 1,500 described species. They are famous for surviving…

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
Fact· Empirical

Seahorse

Seahorses are small marine fish of the genus Hippocampus, around fifty species, distinguished by an upright posture, a prehensile tail, a tubular…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 7, 2026
Fact· Empirical

Sea Turtle

Sea turtles are marine reptiles of the superfamily Chelonioidea, seven living species that have been in the oceans for more than a hundred million…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 7, 2026

Also new

More from the last few days

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
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
geography
Fact· Empirical

Selkirk

Selkirk is a city on the Red River about twenty-two kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, with 10,504 residents at the 2021 census. It came close to…

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
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

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…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
economics
Fact

Insurance

The transfer of risk from an individual to a pool in exchange for a payment. It works because large numbers behave predictably even when individuals…

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

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
geology
Fact· Empirical

Volcano

A volcano is an opening in a planet's crust through which molten rock, gas, and ash erupt from the hot interior to the surface. On Earth they are…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Domestic Cat

The domestic cat, Felis catus, is the most numerous small carnivore on Earth, with something over six hundred million individuals. It is also barely…

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
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
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
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
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
biology
Fact· Empirical

Octopus

Octopuses are eight-armed cephalopod molluscs, around three hundred species, found in every ocean. They have three hearts, blue blood, no skeleton,…

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
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
physics
Fact

Gravity

Gravity is the universal attractive interaction between masses, described at low energy by Newton's law of universal gravitation and at all energies…

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
physics
Contested

Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is the most successful physical theory ever devised, predicting the behavior of atoms, light, and subatomic particles with…

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
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
physics
Contested

The Anthropic Principle

The anthropic principle concerns the striking observation that the universe appears remarkably fine tuned for the existence of life. Many of the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
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
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
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
physics
Hypothesis

Wormholes

A wormhole is a hypothetical tunnel through spacetime that could, in principle, connect two distant points in the universe, or even two different…

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
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
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

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
medicine
Debunked

Humorism: The Four Humors

Humorism, or humoral theory, was the belief that human health depends on the balance of four bodily fluids, called humors: blood, phlegm, yellow…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astrophysics
Debunked

The Steady State Theory

The steady state theory was a model of the universe, popular in the mid twentieth century, which held that the universe has always looked roughly the…

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
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
nutrition
Debunked

Breakfast as the Most Important Meal

The claim that eating breakfast is necessary for health and weight control, and that skipping it causes weight gain. The phrase was popularised 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
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
neuroscience
Debunked

The Left-Brain, Right-Brain Myth

The idea that people are left-brained and therefore logical, or right-brained and therefore creative, is one of the most widely believed claims about…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
astronomy
Debunked

The Geocentric Model

The geocentric model was the ancient belief that the Earth sits motionless at the center of the universe, with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars all…

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
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
geography
Debunked

The Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle is a region of the Atlantic Ocean, roughly between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, said to be the site of mysterious…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
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
physics
Theory· Scientific

General Relativity

General relativity is Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, published in 1915. It reimagines gravity not as a force pulling objects together but as…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
chemistry
Theory

Atomic Theory

Atomic theory is the idea that all matter is made up of tiny particles called atoms. It is one of the most important and successful ideas in all of…

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
mathematics
Theory

Set Theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies collections of objects, called sets. Though it begins with an idea as simple as grouping things…

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
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
computer science
Theory· Mathematical

Information Theory

Information theory is the mathematical study of how information is measured, stored, and communicated. It defines what information actually is in…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Theory

The Kinetic Theory of Gases

The kinetic theory of gases explains the behaviour of gases as the result of countless tiny particles, atoms and molecules, in constant, rapid,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Theory

Mendelian Inheritance

Mendelian inheritance is the set of principles describing how traits are passed from parents to offspring through discrete units we now call genes.…

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
mathematics
Theory

The Theory of Computation

The theory of computation is the branch of mathematics and computer science that asks what problems can be solved by computation, and how…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
0 votes0 reviews
economics
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 reviews
psychology
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 reviews
psychology
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 reviews
chemistry
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 reviews
physics
Theory

BCS Theory

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

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
materials science
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 reviews
ecology
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 reviews
ecology
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 reviews
genetics
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 reviews
earth science
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 reviews
mathematics
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 reviews
chemistry
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 reviews
physics
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 reviews
chemistry
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 reviews
physics
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 reviews
physics
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 reviews
biology
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 reviews
medicine
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 reviews
genetics
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 reviews
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