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

Axolotl

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

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Facteconomics

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 every difficulty the industry…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 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
Fact

Browse all

Showing 441 to 460 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
immunology
Contested

The Hygiene Hypothesis

The hygiene hypothesis is the proposal that reduced exposure to microbes in early childhood leaves the immune system poorly calibrated, and that this…

byCapsule
geography

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 Canadian Shield. It is one of…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factbiology

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 a forest and woodland ape of…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factgeography

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 being the site of the…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
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 reviewsAug 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

Also new

More from the last few days

biology
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 reviews
education
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 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

Wolf

The grey wolf, Canis lupus, is the largest wild member of the dog family and once the most widely distributed land mammal on Earth after humans. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Orca

The orca, Orcinus orca, also called the killer whale, is the largest member of the dolphin family and the most widely distributed mammal on Earth…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
agriculture
Fact

Livestock

Domesticated animals kept for food, fibre, labour and other products. Livestock made agriculture viable on land that grows no crops, and they are now…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
geography
Fact· Empirical

Dauphin

Dauphin is a city in the Parkland region of western Manitoba, between Riding Mountain National Park and Lake Dauphin, with 8,368 residents at the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
biology
Fact· Empirical

Tardigrade

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

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
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
geography
Fact· Empirical

Mount Everest

Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth as measured from sea level, with a summit reaching 8,848.86 metres (29,031.7 feet) above sea level, a…

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
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
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
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
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

Canada

Canada is a country in North America, the second-largest in the world by total area, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific in…

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

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
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

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

Open questions

Hypotheses under investigation and ideas still debated

See all
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
earth science
Hypothesis

The Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis proposes that life and its physical environment on Earth form a single, self regulating system that keeps the planet suitable for…

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
engineering
Contested

Renewable Energy and Electrical Grid Stability

Wind and solar generation are non-dispatchable and produce zero rotational inertia, raising legitimate concerns about frequency regulation and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
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
music
Debunked

The Mozart Effect

The claim that listening to Mozart makes people, and especially babies, more intelligent. It came from one small study whose actual finding was far…

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
neuroscience
Debunked

Phrenology

Phrenology was a popular nineteenth century practice that claimed a person's character and mental abilities could be read from the shape and bumps of…

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
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
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
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
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
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
literature
Debunked

The Shakespeare Authorship Question

The claim that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were written by someone else. It has attracted eminent supporters for a hundred and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
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
biology
Theory· Scientific

Evolution by Natural Selection

Evolution by natural selection is the scientific theory that explains how the diversity of life arose and continues to change. It holds that…

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

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· 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
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

Topology

Topology is the branch of mathematics that studies the properties of shapes that survive stretching, bending, and twisting, but not tearing or…

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
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
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· 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
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
0 votes0 reviews
immunology
Theory· Scientific

Autoimmunity

Autoimmunity is the immune system attacking the body it belongs to. Around a hundred distinct autoimmune conditions are recognised, together…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
immunology
Theory

Herd Immunity

Herd immunity is the protection an unvaccinated person receives when enough of the people around them are immune that a chain of transmission cannot…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
climate science
Contested

Climate Tipping Points

A climate tipping point is a threshold beyond which part of the Earth system shifts into a different state, and does not shift back when the forcing…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
climate science
Theory· Scientific

Extreme Event Attribution

Extreme event attribution is the field that answers the question people ask after every flood, heatwave, and storm: did climate change cause this?…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
climate science
Contested

Climate Sensitivity

Climate sensitivity is the amount of warming that follows from doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is the single…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
genetics
Theory· Scientific

Horizontal Gene Transfer

Horizontal gene transfer is the movement of genetic material between organisms by means other than parent to offspring. It is ordinary among…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
genetics
Contested

The Heritability of Intelligence

How much of the variation in measured intelligence is attributable to genetic variation is among the most technically misunderstood questions in…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
genetics
Contested

Junk DNA

Only a small fraction of the human genome codes for proteins, something under two per cent. What the rest of it is doing has been argued about for…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
genetics
Proven· Replicated

CRISPR Gene Editing

CRISPR is a method for cutting DNA at a chosen location, which makes editing a genome a routine laboratory procedure rather than a specialist feat.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
genetics
Theory· Scientific

Epigenetics

Epigenetics is the study of changes in how genes are used that do not involve changes to the DNA sequence itself. Every cell in a body carries the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
archaeology
Theory

Stratigraphy

Stratigraphy is the study of layers, and the principle that where deposits lie undisturbed the lower ones were laid down before the upper ones. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
archaeology
Contested

The Indus Script

The Indus Valley Civilisation left behind thousands of inscribed objects, mostly small stone seals, carrying sequences of signs that nobody can read.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
archaeology
Contested

Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe is a complex of monumental stone enclosures in southeastern Turkey, built around eleven thousand years ago by people who had not yet…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
archaeology
Proven· Replicated

Radiocarbon Dating

Radiocarbon dating measures how much carbon-14 remains in something that was once alive, and converts that into an age. Developed by Willard Libby in…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
anthropology
Contested

Dunbar's Number

Dunbar's number is the proposal that humans can maintain roughly 150 stable social relationships, and that the limit is set by the size of the brain.…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
anthropology
Theory

Kinship Systems

Kinship is the study of how societies organise relatedness, and it was for a long time the central preoccupation of anthropology. The finding that…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
anthropology
Contested

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is the principle that a culture should be understood on its own terms rather than judged against the standards of another. It…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
sociology
Theory

Anomie

Anomie is the condition of a society whose norms have weakened or become unclear, leaving individuals without adequate guidance about what to want or…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
sociology
Contested

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

In 1905 Max Weber argued that the Protestant Reformation, and Calvinism in particular, produced a cultural disposition toward disciplined work and…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
Previous1…2122232425…52Next