By Ben Guarino The Washington Post

Years ago, the small, ratlike rodents could be seen scurrying across the sand and coral rubble on the Australian island of Bramble Cay. Fishermen would sometimes see them while visiting the island, which is dotted with a few grass clumps, shorebirds and nesting sea turtles in the Great Barrier Reef.

By their estimate, over the history of the universe, stars have emitted 4 times 10-to-the-84th-power photons into the visible universe (that's a 4 followed by 84 zeros).

By Earth's standards, you could hardly imagine a stranger world than frigid, tiny Pluto. It resides in the far corner of the solar system at an average of about 4 billion miles from the sun. NASA's New Horizons probe, which flew within 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet in July 2015, gave us the best look at Pluto yet. There, temperatures plunge to mi...

A tweet can wreak havoc in a few hundred characters, as demonstrated in April 2013 when someone hacked the Associated Press Twitter account and claimed that explosions at the White House had injured President Barack Obama. There were no explosions - and Obama was fine - but the Dow Jones average sank by 100 points in two minutes. Stock markets swif...

They may not look like much more than blue-green smudges, but the images are record-breakers. The machine that took these photos was farther from Earth than any other functioning camera in existence.

Long ago, Egyptians carved a cemetery into a rock wall along the Nile River 250 miles south of Cairo. The cemetery outlasted its 12th Dynasty creators. It survived intermittent pillaging by tomb raiders. And then in 1907, an excavator named Erfai discovered an untouched tomb. This was an unusual burial site. Within the tomb lay two high-society men...

Of the roughly 1.1 billion sheep on Earth, roughly 1.1 billion have no idea who Barack Obama is. But there are at least eight sheep who can recognize the former president by his face. After a few days of training at the University of Cambridge in England, the animals learned to select the former president's portrait out of a collection of photos.

High above Egypt and everywhere else, cosmic rays bombard the atmosphere.

Climate change significantly imperils public health globally, according to a new report that chronicles the many hazards and symptoms already being seen. The authors describe its manifestations as "unequivocal and potentially irreversible."

What seemed to be a new star blazed into existence on March 11, 1437. The galactic newcomer was witnessed by Korean royal astronomers, among the few people taking notes about the stars in the early 15th century. They recorded the spot in the night sky and reported that 14 days later, the flare vanished from its perch in the constellation Scorpius.

As was the case with the first two detections, the waves were generated when two black holes merged to form a larger black hole.

Modern humans outlasted the Neanderthals by about 40,000 years and counting.

A quarter of a billion years ago, when a shallow sea covered what is now southwest China, a large, long-necked aquatic reptile got pregnant. That is an unusual fact by modern standards - many reptiles, such as birds, turtles and crocodiles, do not get pregnant, which is to say they do not incubate embryos within their bodies and give birth to live ...

President-elect Donald Trump, during a news conference in New York City on Wednesday, vehemently denied the salacious and unverified allegations put forth in a 35-page dossier published by BuzzFeed News. Behind a podium in the lobby of Trump Tower, the president-elect professed an awareness that the hotel rooms he visits overseas may be bugged with...

Like so many flings in the summer of 2014, the night Gable Tostee and Warriena Wright spent together began with a flirtatious exchange on Tinder. Their brief relationship would end not with fond memories, but in a death and accusations of murder.

Years ago, the small, ratlike rodents could be seen scurrying across the sand and coral rubble on the Australian island of Bramble Cay. Fishermen would sometimes see them while visiting the island, which is dotted with a few grass clumps, shorebirds and nesting sea turtles in the Great Barrier Reef.

By their estimate, over the history of the universe, stars have emitted 4 times 10-to-the-84th-power photons into the visible universe (that's a 4 followed by 84 zeros).

By Earth's standards, you could hardly imagine a stranger world than frigid, tiny Pluto. It resides in the far corner of the solar system at an average of about 4 billion miles from the sun. NASA's New Horizons probe, which flew within 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet in July 2015, gave us the best look at Pluto yet. There, temperatures plunge to mi...

A tweet can wreak havoc in a few hundred characters, as demonstrated in April 2013 when someone hacked the Associated Press Twitter account and claimed that explosions at the White House had injured President Barack Obama. There were no explosions - and Obama was fine - but the Dow Jones average sank by 100 points in two minutes. Stock markets swif...

They may not look like much more than blue-green smudges, but the images are record-breakers. The machine that took these photos was farther from Earth than any other functioning camera in existence.

Long ago, Egyptians carved a cemetery into a rock wall along the Nile River 250 miles south of Cairo. The cemetery outlasted its 12th Dynasty creators. It survived intermittent pillaging by tomb raiders. And then in 1907, an excavator named Erfai discovered an untouched tomb. This was an unusual burial site. Within the tomb lay two high-society men...

Of the roughly 1.1 billion sheep on Earth, roughly 1.1 billion have no idea who Barack Obama is. But there are at least eight sheep who can recognize the former president by his face. After a few days of training at the University of Cambridge in England, the animals learned to select the former president's portrait out of a collection of photos.

High above Egypt and everywhere else, cosmic rays bombard the atmosphere.

Climate change significantly imperils public health globally, according to a new report that chronicles the many hazards and symptoms already being seen. The authors describe its manifestations as "unequivocal and potentially irreversible."

What seemed to be a new star blazed into existence on March 11, 1437. The galactic newcomer was witnessed by Korean royal astronomers, among the few people taking notes about the stars in the early 15th century. They recorded the spot in the night sky and reported that 14 days later, the flare vanished from its perch in the constellation Scorpius.

As was the case with the first two detections, the waves were generated when two black holes merged to form a larger black hole.

Modern humans outlasted the Neanderthals by about 40,000 years and counting.

A quarter of a billion years ago, when a shallow sea covered what is now southwest China, a large, long-necked aquatic reptile got pregnant. That is an unusual fact by modern standards - many reptiles, such as birds, turtles and crocodiles, do not get pregnant, which is to say they do not incubate embryos within their bodies and give birth to live ...

President-elect Donald Trump, during a news conference in New York City on Wednesday, vehemently denied the salacious and unverified allegations put forth in a 35-page dossier published by BuzzFeed News. Behind a podium in the lobby of Trump Tower, the president-elect professed an awareness that the hotel rooms he visits overseas may be bugged with...

Like so many flings in the summer of 2014, the night Gable Tostee and Warriena Wright spent together began with a flirtatious exchange on Tinder. Their brief relationship would end not with fond memories, but in a death and accusations of murder.