On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO via The Atlantic)

A visitor takes a photo of a boulder plastic made of synthetic material called “To be in Limbo” hangs from the ceiling of the 20 meter high Jesuit Church in Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, November 25, 2014. The eight meter high, hollow and 700 kilogram heavy sculpture from the artists group Steinbrener/Dempf and Huber is supposed to symbolize faith and its threatening moments. The installation will remain until April 19, 2015 and then move to a church in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Ronald Zak/AP Photo)

A view of the construction site of the Chateau de Guedelon near Treigny in the Burgundy region of France, September 13, 2016. Blacksmiths, stonemasons and quarry men are hard at work in a Burgundy forest building a 13th-century-style castle using the most basic tools and materials, replicating the methods used hundreds of years ago to better understand them. (Photo by Jacky Naegelen/Reuters)

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

Two brothers have built a human catapult to fly into a lake. Johannes Schrieber, 26, and his brother Daniel, 28, from Frankfurt, Germany built the wooden contraption, which can fire people five metres into the sky and 12 metres away. The brothers raised more than £700 through crowdfunding to buy the materials, with every penny well spent as nobody has died yet! (Photo by Caters News)

In this October 15, 2014 file photo, Katsu Nakamura, sky division manager for Yamaha USA, moves the RMax unmanned helicopter into position before a demonstration of its aerial application capabilities at the University of California, Davis' Oakville Station test vineyard in Oakville, Calif. Researchers at UC Davis have been studying the effectiveness of the drone's ability for spraying pest control and nutritional materials on the test vineyard in California's Napa Valley. (Photo by Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo)

A bird is cleaned at the International Bird Rescue in Fairfield, California January 20, 2015. A gooey, unknown material discovered on the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay is clinging to the feathers of birds, and more than 100 birds, mostly species of oceangoing, diving ducks, have died after their feathers were fouled by the viscous substance now undergoing testing at state labs in Sacramento. (Photo by Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

Popocatepetl volcano spews incandescent material as seen from Paso de Cortés on May 23, 2023 in Amecameca, Mexico. The second highest volcano in the country increased its activity while Mexican authorities raised the alert to yellow phase 3. Popocatepetl volcano caused the fall of ashes in different municipalities in Puebla, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City. Mexican army has spread forces as a preventive measure while the 3 levels of government are in coordination to observe the activity of the volcano and the situation in the surroundings. (Photo by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)