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Truth Classification

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

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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

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
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
Facteconomics

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 do not, and its two persistent…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Fact

Browse all

Showing 281 to 300 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
biology
Hypothesis

The Major Transitions in Evolution

The proposal that the history of life is punctuated by a small number of events in which independently reproducing entities combined into a larger…

byCapsule
biology

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, and they occupy every…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
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
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

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 reviewsAug 5, 2026

Also new

More from the last few days

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
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

Hummingbird

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

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

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…

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
biology
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 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Common Raven

The common raven, Corvus corax, is the largest songbird in the world and among the most widely distributed birds on Earth, occupying the whole…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
media studies
Fact

Radio

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

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
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

Penguin

Penguins are flightless seabirds of the southern hemisphere, around eighteen species, which gave up flight in the air for flight underwater. They are…

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
agriculture
Fact

Traditional Yoruba Agricultural Practices in Southwestern Nigeria

The Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria developed sophisticated agricultural systems over centuries that integrated intercropping, seasonal…

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
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
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
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
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
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
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

Open questions

Hypotheses under investigation and ideas still debated

See all
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
astronomy
Contested

The Origin of the Moon

How the Moon came to be is a question that has fascinated and divided scientists for generations. While one explanation is now favoured, important…

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
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
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

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
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
science
Debunked

Cold Fusion at Room Temperature

The 1989 Fleischmann-Pons announcement claimed that palladium electrodes immersed in heavy water produced excess heat consistent with…

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
physics
Debunked

The Luminiferous Aether

The luminiferous aether was a hypothetical substance once believed to fill all of space and to serve as the medium through which light waves…

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
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
medicine
Debunked

Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

The claim that vaccines cause autism is one of the most damaging medical myths of modern times. It has been investigated exhaustively and thoroughly…

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
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

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
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

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

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
physics
Theory

Dark Matter: The Leading Theoretical Framework for Missing Mass in the Universe

Dark matter is the leading theoretical framework proposed to explain gravitational effects observed in galaxies and galaxy clusters that cannot be…

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
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
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

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
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
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· 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
earth science
Theory· Scientific

Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that Earth's outer shell is broken into a set of large, rigid plates that drift slowly over the hotter,…

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
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
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
0 votes0 reviews
biology
Hypothesis

The Sexy Son Hypothesis

The proposal that a female may benefit from choosing an attractive mate even if he provides nothing else, because her sons inherit the attractiveness…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Hypothesis

Developmental Origins of Health and Disease

The proposal that conditions in the womb and in early infancy set a person's risk of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions decades later. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Hypothesis

The Glutamate Hypothesis of Schizophrenia

The proposal that schizophrenia involves underactive NMDA receptors rather than, or as well as, excess dopamine. It explains what the dopamine…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Hypothesis

The Seed and Soil Hypothesis

The proposal that cancers spread to particular organs not by accident of circulation but because those tissues are hospitable to them. It was…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Hypothesis

The Warburg Effect

Cancer cells burn glucose wastefully, converting it to lactate even when oxygen is plentiful. The observation is a century old and undisputed, it is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Hypothesis

The Baldwin Effect

The proposal that behaviours learned during life can steer subsequent genetic evolution, without any Lamarckian inheritance of acquired traits. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geology
Hypothesis

The Boring Billion

The proposal that Earth spent roughly a billion years, from about 1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago, in near-total stasis: stable climate, stable…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Proven

The Monty Hall Problem

A probability puzzle with a counterintuitive answer, made famous when thousands of people including professional mathematicians insisted publicly…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
mathematics
Proven

Cantor's Diagonal Argument

A proof that some infinities are larger than others. It is a few lines long, it requires nothing beyond counting, it was violently rejected when…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Proven

The Two-Hit Hypothesis

Cancer caused by loss of a tumour suppressor requires both copies of the gene to be knocked out. Alfred Knudson deduced this in 1971 from the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biochemistry
Proven

The Krebs Cycle

The central sequence of reactions by which cells extract energy from food. It runs in nearly every organism that uses oxygen, it is the hub where the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Proven

Snell's Law

Light bends when it passes between materials, by an amount fixed by a simple ratio. The rule governs every lens, every fibre optic cable and the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Proven

Electromagnetic Induction

A changing magnetic field produces an electric current. Michael Faraday demonstrated it in 1831, and essentially all the world's electricity is…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
physics
Proven

Archimedes' Principle

A body immersed in a fluid is pushed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. It explains why steel ships float, it is over two…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
neuroscience
Proven

The Blood-Brain Barrier

A selective barrier separating the brain's blood supply from its tissue, admitting what neurons need and excluding almost everything else. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Proven

The Cell Cycle

The ordered sequence a cell follows to duplicate itself, controlled by checkpoints that stop it proceeding until the previous stage is complete.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Hypothesis

Group Selection

The proposal that natural selection can act on groups as well as individuals, favouring traits that benefit the group at the individual's expense. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
medicine
Hypothesis

The Inflammatory Hypothesis of Depression

The proposal that inflammation causes depression in some patients. The evidence is better than for the serotonin account it partly replaced, and the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Hypothesis

Niche Construction

The proposal that organisms do not merely adapt to environments but build them, and that the environments they build become selection pressures for…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
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