Tag Archives: Science & Nature

Expensive specialty coffee: Dollar sign drawing on a latte coffee cup

How Shops Deceive You – The Decoy Effect Explained

Do you sometimes feel like you made a choice you didn’t really want to make? Marketers use a lot of tricks to get you to spend more money than you meant to. One of the most popular is “the decoy effect.” When faced with two choices—like a small or large drink—most people can pick pretty easily. Watch this video to learn how adding a third choice, or a “decoy” (like a medium size), can actually manipulate you into buying the more expensive option—even if you didn’t really want to.

Interplanetary Space Station Orbiting the Red Planet, Mars

NASA Debuts New Orion Mission Control Room for Artemis 2 Astronaut Flight Around the Moon

With the development of the next-generation Orion spacecraft—designed to eventually take astronauts to Mars— comes a number of all-new, advanced systems designed to track, monitor, and communicate with the spacecraft and its passengers. For NASA’s Mission Control facilities, all this additional technology meant that a brand new space was required to house the additional monitors and extra personnel. And that new space was shown to the public for the first time in late August of 2025.

Bee pollinating purple lavender flowers in a field

A Different Light (Comparing Flowers Under Normal and Ultraviolet Light)

Roses are red…or are they?
While flowers may appear one way to us, it turns out they are hiding secret patterns that our limited eyes cannot detect. But that’s OK. Those hidden patterns aren’t for us. They are for the pollinating insects flying by.
Hidden in the ultraviolet spectrum of light, this article explains the functions those designs serve and provides examples of flowers in different lighting conditions.

Colorful rainbow smoke on black background

This Impossible New Color Is So Rare That Only Five People Have Seen It

Have you ever seen the color “olo?” Unless you are one of only five people on the planet who have, the answer is ‘no.’
Recently, researchers achieved the unusual feat of stimulating the eye in such a way as to allow it to see a color outside the range of normal human vision. This work is brand new, but scientists hope that it will lead to new vision treatments and help us to better understand how animals see the world.

Haunted house

Evolutionary psychology explains why haunted houses creep us out

An old and dilapidated house being reclaimed by greenery. Creaky floorboards and shifting walls that seem to groan. Intimidating exterior looming in the darkness. All possible elements of a “haunted house,” but what exactly do we find so scary? Read on to discover a psychologist’s take on the subject.