Yes, June was a hot a month for folks in the US, but just how hot? According to the National Climactic Data Center, US states and territories saw 2,284 temperature records broken in June and 998 records tied. The center has conveniently mapped out all 3,282 of those record temperatures.

Let's imagine that you and a friend could converse on the planet Venus — without having to worry about the lack of oxygen, crushing pressure, and beyond boiling temperatures. Your friend would sound so different that you'd actually see her differently.

As global temperatures rise and the oceans heat up, a huge question is how fish that are adapted to one set of temperatures will survive this upheaval. Now we know at least one species could adapt fast enough to survive.

These nails start out perfectly arranged, the hardware store equivalent of a perfect crystalline structure. But as their bed begins to vibrate and they start moving around, they become increasingly disordered, actually imitating all the stages of a melting crystal.

If you ask people why they yawn, the most typical answer will be "because I'm tired." But sleepiness and boredom might not be the real reasons behind yawning. It actually might be a way of getting rid of hot air.

The last decade was the hottest on record, and yet it wasn't until 2010 that an individual year was hotter than the record-breaking 1998 heatwave. Somehow, global temperatures mysteriously flattened out. The explanation may lie thousands of feet underwater.

At zero degrees Celsius, liquid water freezes into ice. That should be the end of the story, but under very special conditions, frozen water can flow like a liquid. This frozen flowing water could be found on other planets.

The fact that sea levels are rising probably won't come as a huge surprise. But we now have some much-needed historical context for the melting icecaps and rising waters...and there's zero doubt that, in geological history, higher sea levels meant higher temperatures.

Just 63 light-years away, there's a failed star known as a brown dwarf barely any bigger than Jupiter. It's temperature is way less than 100 degrees Celsius, which blurs the line even more between the smallest stars and biggest planets.

The newest exoplanet a world of ridiculous extremes: it orbits its star at a mere fraction of the distance between the Sun and Mercury, it's four times the size of Jupiter, and the planet's temperature is hotter than some stars.