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Truth Classification

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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

Factbiology

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 is also the ancestor of the…

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

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 census. It was built from…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Fact

Browse all

Showing 461 to 480 of 1,028

NewestMost votedA to Z
sociology
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
medicine

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, and its history is inseparable…

by Capsule · Aug 5, 2026
Factgeography

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 centre of North America. With…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Factgeography

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 9,929 residents at the 2021…

by Capsule · Aug 7, 2026
Fact

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…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsAug 5, 2026
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 reviewsAug 7, 2026

Also new

More from the last few days

biology
Fact· Empirical

Salmon

Salmon are anadromous fish of the family Salmonidae: born in fresh water, grown at sea, and returning to fresh water to spawn, in most cases to the…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviews
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
economics
Fact

Accounting

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

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

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
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
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
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

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

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

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
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
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

Honey Bee

Honey bees are eusocial insects of the genus Apis, of which the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is the one kept worldwide. They communicate the…

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

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
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
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
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
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
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

Open questions

Hypotheses under investigation and ideas still debated

See all
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
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
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
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
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
philosophy
Contested

Free Will

Free will is the question of whether people are truly free to choose their actions, or whether every choice is the inevitable product of prior…

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
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
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
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
astronomy
Hypothesis

The Rare Earth Hypothesis

The Rare Earth hypothesis proposes that complex, multicellular life, of the kind found on Earth, is extremely rare in the universe, because it…

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

Debunked

Claims the evidence overturned

See all
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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

Theories explained

Well substantiated explanations of how things work

See all
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
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
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
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
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
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

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
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

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
physics
Theory

Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is the branch of physics concerned with heat, energy, and work, and how they transform from one form to another. Its laws are among…

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
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
0 votes0 reviews
sociology
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 reviews
sociology
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 reviews
law
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 reviews
law
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 reviews
law
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 reviews
law
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 reviews
linguistics
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 reviews
linguistics
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 reviews
linguistics
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 reviews
psychology
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 reviews
philosophy
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 reviews
philosophy
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 reviews
economics
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 reviews
economics
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 reviews
economics
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 reviews
economics
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 reviews
computer science
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 reviews
computer science
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 reviews
computer science
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 reviews
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