Searching for Science
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Among all continents, Europe is the one that goes the most to Google with science-related questions. For our 25th birthday, we explored how the biggest research breakthroughs and day-to-day scientific topics are reflected in the way people search in the continent
When the first photograph of a black hole was released in 2019, those were some of the questions Europeans were asking more frequently
Using those and other questions, we could track how Europeans were traveling from one scientific topic to the other
Each of the brighter stars on the night sky you see is a scientific concept – either a larger-than-life breakthrough, such as generative AI and nuclear fusion, or smaller, science-class homework topics such as gravity and the human skeleton
Notice how each star is connected to many others, forming over a hundred constellations. These links show how people, when searching for one concept, often end up asking questions about others topics as well
For example, after searching for black holes, many people were still curious about the newest discovery. Just after the first search, Google users also asked questions about Messier 87, the galaxy where the black hole in the picture was located.
This is why there's a link between black hole and Messier 87. When the first was trending, people who searched about it were also curious about the latter
The same happened for the other topics surrounding black hole, such as NASA, gravitational waves and telescopes
By charting all those connections, a constellation was built. There are over 100 of those, each showing how Google users traveled from one part of this scientific galaxy to the other.
You can also explore these search journeys in your country for each of the 100 topics, and how they compare to the top related searches across Europe.