How to Draw an Exoplanet
A pair of illustrators turned tiny blips in data into vivid views from the TRAPPIST-1 star system.
-
![]()
Pat Sullivan / AP What’s Different About Astronaut DNA?
Three researchers describe their findings in NASA’s study of identical twin brothers, one in space and one on Earth.
-
![]()
Pichi Chuang / Reuters Can Salted Doorknobs Prevent Superbug Infections?
In the battle against antibiotic resistance, salt might be a simple but effective weapon.
-
![]()
Carolina Levis The Amazon Rainforest Was Profoundly Changed by Ancient Humans
The region’s ecology is a product of 8,000 years of indigenous agriculture.
-
![]()
New York Genome Center This Speck of DNA Contains a Movie, a Computer Virus, and an Amazon Gift Card
Meet the storage format that never goes obsolete.
-
The Best Email I've Ever Received From a Scientist
When I first contacted Nikolai Formozov about his paper on a 30,000-year-old squirrel originally found by Gulag prisoners, which…
-
![]()
Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences An Ice-Age Squirrel Found by Gulag Prisoners Gets Its Scientific Due
“We should be very thankful to those unnamed prisoners who saved those carcasses.”
-
![]()
Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey / NASA / JPL-Caltech Machine Learning Is Bringing the Cosmos Into Focus
Training neural networks to identify galaxies could forever change humanity’s perspective of the universe.
-
![]()
Neil Hammerschlag Coral Reefs Shouldn’t Look Like Finding Nemo
Scientists have devised an ingenious new method to figure out which of these habitats are most worth saving.
-
![]()
Thomas Mukoya / Reuters Wild Elephants Sleep Just Two Hours a Night
They get less than any other animal, which leaves a jumbo-sized hole in theories about why animals snooze at all.
-
![]()
China Stringer Network / Reuters What’s Dangerous About an Early Spring
When one natural cycle falls out of sync with another, everyone pays the price.
-
![]()
Wikimedia Commons The Girls With Radioactive Bones
How the “radium girls” revealed the danger of radiation, and fought for safety standards
-
![]()
Thomas Peter / Reuters The Sommeliers Who Lick Rocks to Train Their Palates
A history of wine obsessives
-
![]()
Albeiro Lopera / Reuters How Math Can Tell You When to Move On in Life
Moderation seems to be a better approach than greed—for foragers, at least.
-
![]()
Bettmann / Getty Do Scientists Lose Credibility When They Become Political?
A new study suggests that, contrary to common fears, the answer is no.
-
![]()
USGS / Reuters The Scary State of Volcano Monitoring in the United States
One of the most volcanically active countries in the world is not ready for a devastating eruption.
-
![]()
Joe Skipper / Reuters Will Elon Musk Send the First Woman to the Moon?
To make a triumphant return to the moon with two dudes on board would be, well, less triumphant.
-
![]()
U.S. Coast Guard / Reuters How Volcanoes Make the Universe More Livable
Hydrogen-spewing eruptions could help heat the atmospheres of planets that were once thought to be outside of the habitable zone.
-
![]()
Wikimedia Commons The Factious, High-Drama World of Bird Taxonomy
Some ornithologists have very strong feelings about hyphens.
-
![]()
Reuters How Brain Scientists Forgot That Brains Have Owners
Five neuroscientists argue that fancy new technologies have led the field astray.
-
![]()
Mike Blake / Reuters Humans' Hidden Ability to Navigate the World With Tongue Clicks
Researchers are discovering just how easily both blind and sighted people can be trained to echolocate.
