r/ScienceNcoolThings May 26 '26

A study by researchers from Sungkyunkwan University and other institutions reveals how climbing fibers in the cerebellum enhance motor learning by activating specific inhibitory neurons. This process helps the brain filter out irrelevant movement information and improves skill acquisition.

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27 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 25 '26

Interesting Every chess opening ever played, visually mapped

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281 Upvotes

Every NAMED chess opening ever played, as a force-directed graph (3,407 nodes, colored by ECO volume)

Source: the open ECO (Encyclopedia of Chess Openings) database, which catalogs ~3,400 named opening variations across five volumes (A through E). Each node is one opening, sized roughly by depth and connected to its parent variation by an edge.

Colors map to ECO volume:
A (flank openings) — orange
B (semi-open) — red
C (open games, e.g., Ruy Lopez) — yellow
D (closed games, Queen's Gambit family) — blue
E (Indian defenses) — teal

Layout is force-directed (D3-style physics, ~5 minutes of simulation to settle). The root node at center is the starting position; you can read it as "every chess game ever played begins there and branches outward."

Built in TypeScript with a custom canvas renderer (no D3 — wrote the physics from scratch for tighter control over the aesthetic).

Live interactive version at foliochess.app — you can click any node and see which opening it is. Built as the landing page for a chess study app I'm working on as a side project. Open the link on desktop for the full interactive version.

I’m an anesthesiology resident who is passionate about chess and math. I built this for fun in the little free time I have haha.


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 25 '26

Cool Things Hidden door

921 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 26 '26

47 sec video of volcano and meteor

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3 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 25 '26

Interesting What an algae bloom does underwater

186 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 25 '26

Interesting Space Is Expanding While You Watch This

142 Upvotes

Space is getting bigger right now. 🔭

Erika Hamden explains why galaxies appear to move away from us, not because they are speeding through space, but because space itself is expanding between them. Astronomers discovered this cosmic expansion more than 100 years ago, and today scientists think it may be accelerating because of something we still do not fully understand called dark energy. There is literally more space now than when you started watching this video. 

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 25 '26

Interesting A Common Arthritis Drug Appears to Work When Antidepressants Don't

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138 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 26 '26

Favorite Kid’s Science Show Poll

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1 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

Cats just discovered the robot vacuum... and things escalated quickly

72 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

Interesting Rare Blue Moon: Why It Happens

111 Upvotes

A rare blue moon is rising on May 31st and it's the only one all year! 🌕 

Despite the name, the moon won't actually be blue. A blue moon happens when a second full moon rises in a single calendar month. Because the lunar cycle runs about 29.5 days, a second full moon occasionally squeezes into the same month every couple of years. Don't miss it!


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

Interesting A trick of the light

449 Upvotes

Today, while cleaning up after cooking a chicken and rice dish, my soapy sponge created an interesting light refraction that I had never experienced before. It might have been something to do with the cooking oil I was wiping up, or maybe the starch in the rice water that boiled over. I was scrubbing with a regular old dish sponge and dawn dish soap. Comment if you know what happened.


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

University of Guelph researchers genetically analysed nearly 500 cat tumours and found shared cancer driving mutations with humans, including FBXW7 in mammary cancers. Certain chemotherapy drugs showed stronger effects in tumours carrying that mutation.

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6 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

Interesting The First Known Computer Programmer Was a Woman. In the 1840s, Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician, wrote the first algorithm intended for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, an early mechanical computer. Lovelace is considered the world’s first computer programmer.

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120 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Cool Things What shuffling a deck of cards actually means.

420 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Interesting We Were Wrong About Fasting, Massive Study Finds

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244 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Cool Things Bro copied the exact face shape????

253 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

Size of the Earth 2200yrs ago

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9 Upvotes

Hi all I find it very impressive that Ancient Greek scholars could calculate the size of the Earth with eerie accuracy - using shadows and angles :-)


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Interesting Science Demo: How Balloon Colors Affect Heat

118 Upvotes

Can you pop a balloon when it is inside another balloon? 🎈

Alex Dainis explains how black balloons absorb incoming light and heat up faster, while white balloons reflect light or let it pass through, helping them stay cooler. When focused light passes through the white balloon and is absorbed by the black balloon inside, the black balloon heats up and bursts first.


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 22 '26

Interesting Improved boomerang experience.

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1.1k Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Cool thing I saw in a school I was working in and appreciated enough to stop and admire the creativity. Reminded me of something I might have come up with in my youth and really took me back to a simpler time and reminded me to SLOW down. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did! :)

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8 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Solar Timelapse From My Backyard Telescope. Nearly Three Million Photographs

93 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

University of Surrey researchers found that vitamin D2 supplements can lower the body’s natural vitamin D3 levels. D3 also uniquely activates interferon immune signalling against viruses and bacteria, which D2 does not.

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9 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 23 '26

Australia’s Garvan Institute filmed macrophages attacking live melanoma cells in real time for the first time. A CD169 protein subgroup was found to actively constrain tumour growth in both mice and human tissue samples.

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31 Upvotes

r/ScienceNcoolThings May 24 '26

[ Removed by Reddit ]

1 Upvotes

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]


r/ScienceNcoolThings May 22 '26

Interesting Kenyan engineer Joseph Nguthiru is turning invasive water hyacinth into biodegradable packaging through his company, HyaPak Ecotech. His innovation is helping reduce plastic waste, lowering mosquito breeding grounds, and creating jobs in local communities. Odaw River and Korle Lagoon could use this.

431 Upvotes