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Walking into a school gymnasium, you may be greeted with a familiar noise—SQUEAK! This is the sound of rubber-soled sneakers on a hardwood floor, and it’s often heard in PE classes and basketball games. For years, no one knew exactly why this rubber-meets-floor combination created so much squeaking. Finally, we have an answer: shoe earthquakes.

To pinpoint the noisy culprit, Harvard University scientist Adel Djellouli set up a sliding sneaker station equipped with high-speed cameras and microphones. Djellouli and his colleagues slid sneakers back and forth over a smooth glass plate, capturing the motion and sound of the rubber as the shoe moved.

Djellouli discovered that the rubber shoe sole ripples and changes shape as it grips and releases its traction with the floor. This movement happens thousands of times per second at supersonic speed. The result is a high-pitched sound. 

March is Women’s History Month! On the heels of the 2026 Winter Olympics, let’s look back at some inspiring athletes who made sports history on the international Olympic stage.

Just when you thought the thrill of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games was over, the Paralympic Games are about to begin! From March 6 to March 15, hundreds of athletes with disabilities will be competing in Italy for a chance to capture gold.

Paralympic athletes may compete using specialized equipment adapted to their needs. For example, some para alpine skiers opt for a single ski or a sit-ski. A sit-ski is designed for people who have difficulty coordinating their lower limbs. Skiers with vision impairments use a sighted guide who gives verbal signals to cue the skier through the course.

Para ice hockey players swap hockey skates for a hockey sledge, which is a metal frame with skate blades on the bottom. Each hockey player has two hockey sticks as well, doubling the excitement.

The modified equipment helps the athletes control their movements while they fly down snowy slopes or glide across the ice.

Other Paralympic events include para snowboarding, para cross-country skiing, para biathlon, and wheelchair curling. As many as 665 athletes from dozens of nations are expected to compete.

Click through the slideshow above for photos of previous Paralympic Games.

Let’s play a little trivia game: What is the highest mountain on Earth? That is easy—it’s Mount Everest in Nepal! Who were the first people to reach its summit? If you said Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and Edmund Hillary, then you win! This climbing pair became the first people to set foot on the world’s highest point on May 29, 1953.

Both Hillary and Tenzing grew up climbing mountains on opposite sides of the globe, but the drive to conquer Everest caused their paths to converge. Hillary was a mountain climber from New Zealand, and Tenzing was a Nepali-Indian Sherpa who had been working on the slopes of Everest since he was a teenager.

On February 17, billions of people around the world will celebrate Lunar New Year and with it, the start of the Year of the Horse. The Lunar New Year is an annual festival that begins between January 21 and February 20, depending on the cycles of the Moon. It is traditionally celebrated in Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, and South Korea. People of Asian descent also celebrate this annual holiday in their communities around the globe.

Lunar New Year celebrations typically include family gatherings, specials foods, red decorations, and lanterns. In China, the Lunar New Year also marks a change in the Chinese Zodiac. The zodiac consists of 12 animals. People are thought to have the personality traits of the animal that represents their birth year. The 2026 Lunar New Year marks the end of the Year of the Snake and the start of the Year of the Horse. You can find your animal in the image below.

Cultures around the world have holidays that follow a lunar calendar. Many people in India celebrate Diwali, which follows the Hindu lunar calendar. Muslim and Jewish peoples around the globe also celebrate respective holidays aligned with the Moon’s cycle. 

Like many competitive figure skaters, Elladj Baldé dreamed of competing at the Olympics. He came close in 2014 but just missed making the Canadian team that year. Since then, Baldé has turned disappointment into a journey to celebrate skating beyond the Olympics and bring more young people of color to the ice. 

Baldé described the heartbreaking moment he felt his dream slip from his grasp.

“When I realized that the Olympics wasn’t necessarily my path, I lost complete sense of who I was,” he said in an interview with Olympics.com. This caused the Canadian figure skater to seek purpose in performance beyond competition. Now he’s using social media to share the joy of skating with people who wouldn’t otherwise get the chance.

Baldé is currently one of the biggest social media stars of the figure skating world, with millions of followers who watch his skating videos online. He uses his social media platform to improve racial inclusion in his beloved sport, particularly to help fund training for skaters of color. Baldé himself has Russian and Guinean ancestry. 

“What has happened with social media and the amount of success I’ve been able to experience, I know [that] has already created a wave of skaters that believe that they can be part of this sport,” said Baldé in another interview. He hopes the figure skating joy will continue to grow.

“There’s so many layers to skating; it’s such a beautiful sport. … And you can use that to express yourself in some of the most beautiful ways.”

This winter, more than 3,500 athletes from 93 countries will gather in Italy to compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The Olympic Games will start with an opening ceremony on February 6, and the Paralympic Games, a competition for athletes with disabilities, will begin a month later, on March 6.

The Olympics include just about any snow and ice sport you can think of, including alpine skiing, bobsleigh, curling, figure skating, ice hockey, luge, ski jumping, snowboarding, and speed skating. 

Ski mountaineering, also called skimo, is a new addition to the winter sport lineup. The sport mimics the skills used by mountain explorers and requires racers to ski up and down a mountain course. Skimo competitors tackle slippery slopes with the help of “skins,” which they put on the bottom of their skis. The skins look like pieces of sticky carpet and provide traction so that the skis won’t slide backward down the mountain. 

Paleontologists have uncovered a new dinosaur predator, while also revealing a case of mistaken identity for a skeleton within a famous fossil called the Dueling Dinosaurs. 

The fossil shows two dinosaurs—a leaf-eating Triceratops and a young predator—seemingly locked in a deadly battle. For decades, many experts thought the small, fierce predator in the fossil was a teen Tyrannosaurus rex. However, a recent study confirms that the fossil is a related, but entirely different, “dwarf” species of tyrannosaur called the Nanotyrannus.

Ultimately, key clues helped reveal the identity of the predator skeleton. Paleontologists studied the fossil’s arm length and bone growth rings to conclude the tyrannosaur was a fully grown adult dinosaur—not a young one.

January 19, 2026, is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in the United States. This holiday honors the American civil rights leader who helped lead the movement to end racial discrimination and promote equal rights. 

A major aspect of King’s legacy was his commitment to nonviolent resistance. Nonviolence is a form of protest that uses peaceful actions like boycotts, marches, and civil disobedience to draw attention to unjust laws. Among King’s famous nonviolent protests were the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which Black Americans refused to use segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, and the March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to hundreds of thousands of protesters.

King’s dedication to nonviolence was inspired by another global leader: Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi used nonviolent resistance to lead the Indian Independence Movement against British colonization in India. He and his followers protested British rule by organizing hunger strikes and marches, both of which ultimately contributed to India winning its independence in 1947. 

Nonviolent resistance methods have been used in movements around the world. Nelson Mandela and other activists used nonviolent protests to help end apartheid—a system of racial discrimination—in South Africa. Aung San Suu Kyi led a nonviolent struggle to bring democracy to Myanmar. 

Like King, these leaders spent time in prison for their efforts to improve human rights in their countries. Rather than give up, they kept on fighting. They also earned honors and awards for their dedication to peace and nonviolent change.

The slideshow at the top of this article features all four iconic leaders in action.

Could origami—the art of paper folding—help people needing shelter after a wildfire or a hurricane? 

This question inspired 14-year-old Miles Wu’s research project, which focused on origami-inspired engineering for disaster relief shelters. Miles, a longtime origami fan, studied the strength of the Miura-ori fold pattern as a design for a temporary structure. 

Miura-ori is the name of an origami fold created by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura. When folded in this pattern, a material can be stored in a small space but can also be unfolded in a swift movement. Miura-ori has been used to make satellite solar panels that go to space. 

Miles’s research shows that variations of this pattern could work to create a lightweight, easy-to-store emergency shelter that, once unfolded, would be strong enough to protect people. 

“Miura-ori are really strong, lightweight, and compactable, meaning they could offer a better alternative as deployable structures in emergency situations,” said Miles in an interview with the Society for Science.