The Powerball jackpot hit $1.2 billion. Here's why people believe they'll win — even when the odds are 1 in 292 million.

Tech Insider
hand holding powerball lottery ticket
A man displays his Powerball lottery numbers after buying a ticket at a convenience store in Miami, November 2, 2022.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo

NASA caught a 1.2 mile-high Martian dust devil on camera and scientists say it's way bigger than whirlwinds on Earth

Tech Insider
dust devil seen in distance on Mars
The dust devil appears as a white-ish moving column in the distance.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mercury is slowly shrinking, and it's giving the planet wrinkles

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A picture shows Mercury colored in shades of yellow and blue to reflect variation in its composition. the planet appears covered in craters and cracks.
A false-color picture of Mercury shows variations in its surface. The image was placed on a grey background.

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington; Insider

A huge python built its lair in a trailer park and grew 13ft long eating the neighborhood cats

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Reticulated Python
A stock image of a reticulated python. An Oklahoma neighborhood reported half its cats missing after a 13-foot python moved under a nearby mobile home.

Mark Kostich/iStock/Getty Images

In a first-ever for space junk, Dish Network was fined $150,000 for leaving a retired satellite to orbit indefinitely in the wrong place

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space junk debris field earth orbit esa
An illustration of space junk. Satellites and debris are not to scale.

ESA

An orca pod has been harassing and killing porpoises for decades — but they don't eat them. Scientists still don't know why.

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tops of killer whales above water in Pacific Northwest
Killer whales near the San Juan Islands in Washington.

Wolfgang Kaehler/Getty Images

Airlines want you to lose weight. Ozempic could save them millions.

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Three boxes of Wegovy on a light wood counter
Weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic have become so popular over the last year that there have been shortages.

picture alliance/Getty Images

The world's first dog-fox hybrid was genetically confirmed in Brazil. It's a problem.

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Domestic dog on left and pampas fox on right.
A dog-fox hybrid between a domestic dog (like the one on the left) and a pampas fox (like the one on the right) was long thought to be impossible.

Lourdes Balduque / Edsel Querini / Getty Images

Panama Canal slashes the number of ships allowed through — drought means there isn't enough water in the channel

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Monrovia NSU CHALLENGER bulk carrier transits the expanded canal through Cocoli Locks at the Panama Canal, on the outskirts of Panama City, Panama April 19, 2023.
A container ship making its way through the Panama Canal in April 2023, before the drought lowered the water level..

Reuters/ARIS MARTINEZ

This Caribbean island was once plagued with rats that destroyed the ecosystem. Now, plant biomass has increased 2,000% thanks to environmental group efforts.

Tech Insider : Travel
A view of Redonda island.
Conservationists have been working to restore native life on the island of Redonda.

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