Butterfly wings aren't actually colorful. 🦋🔬
Our friend Chloé Savard, also known as tardibabe on Instagram, shows us why on a microscopic level. Most butterfly and moth wings are technically transparent. What you're seeing is light bouncing off thousands of microscopic scales layered across the wing membrane, like tiles on a mosaic.
Zoom in with a microscope and each "scale" is actually a tiny, ridged plate, uniquely shaped depending on the species. The color you see comes from one of two places: pigment molecules that soak up certain wavelengths and bounce back others, or the scale's physical architecture bending light directly.
That second kind is structural color, and the blue morpho butterfly (Morpho menelaus) is the textbook example. The blue itself comes entirely from microscopic ridges that scatter light at specific angles. No blue pigment is involved. The color shifts or vanishes depending on where you're standing. Opals, soap bubbles, and some beetle shells use the same trick.
Some species take this even further as a warning system. Many toxic or foul-tasting butterflies, like the monarch, advertise their unpalatability with bold, high-contrast colors instead of hiding. Predators learn to associate the pattern with a bad experience, and they’ll avoid it next time.
That strategy is called aposematism. You can find versions of it throughout the animal kingdom, from insects and frogs to reptiles and marine animals. Light, bent just right, can be both beautiful and useful!
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What's the most distant galaxy ever observed? 🌌
Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains it's called MoM-z14, and its light took 13.53 billion years to reach us. But thanks to the universe's expansion, that galaxy is now a staggering 33.8 billion light years away. When the light was emitted from MoM-z14 the universe was smaller. The space between us and that galaxy has gotten stretched out so much that it actually sits outside our observable horizon. It's a mind-bending reminder that we're seeing galaxies as they no longer even look today.
This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.
How does fire make tea bags fly? 🔥☕️
Alex Dainis demonstrates how lighting a tea bag causes the air inside to heat up, expand, and rush out. Just fold open a few empty tea bags into tubes on a baking sheet, then light the top with an adult and a fire extinguisher handy. The now-less-dense air inside sends the bag rocketing upward, similar to how a hot air balloon works, except this one's a one way trip once it burns.
We are getting closer to the launch of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! 🧪
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to combine the strengths of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s going to look and live in the same space as JWST while using a Hubble-style mirror to see things completely differently. The Roman telescope will observe patches of space bigger than the full moon and will see 50 times as much space in five years as Hubble has in 30!
Can sugar substitutes cause faster brain aging?
Scientists conducted an eight-year study on the effects of seven popular sugar substitutes and found that six were linked to mental decline. People in the study who used sweeteners the most saw their memory slip away 62% faster than the lowest-consumption group. This is like adding an extra year and a half of aging to your brain! Scientists believe this pattern is worth watching as we reevaluate our relationship with artificial sweeteners.
Rainwater is not as clean as you think! 🌧️
Quinten Geldhof, also known as Microhobbyist, put a drop of rainwater under the microscope to show what each drop carries. For a raindrop to form, it needs to condense around tiny particles in the atmosphere called condensation nuclei. As the droplet falls, it can pick up pollen, fungal spores, smoke particles, and more. If you’re ever tempted to drink rainwater, don’t forget to treat and filter it first!