Ed Yong
How the Pandemic Will End
The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.
-
![]()
Victor J. Blue / Getty Everyone Thinks They’re Right About Masks
How the coronavirus travels through the air has become one of the most divisive debates in this pandemic.
-
![]()
emarys / Getty Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful
We’ve known about SARS-CoV-2 for only three months, but scientists can make some educated guesses about where it came from and why it’s behaving in such an extreme way.
-
![]()
The Atlantic The U.K.’s Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ Debacle
The country is not aiming for 60 percent of the populace to get COVID-19, but you’d be forgiven for thinking so based on how badly the actual plan has been explained.
-
![]()
Davis Huber The Last Giraffes on Earth
The planet’s tallest animal is in far greater danger than people might think.
-
![]()
Reuters The Strange Influence the Sun Has on Whales
A solar storm can throw whales off-course, suggesting that the large animals might have an internal compass.
-
![]()
Fox Photos / Hulton Archive / Getty A Huge Discovery in the World of Viruses
Giant phages have been found in French lakes, baboons from Kenya, and the human mouth.
-
![]()
Kevin Enge The Cascading Consequences of the Worst Disease Ever
Nature is clearly in crisis—but what do researchers do when they only have imperfect data on the extent of the losses?
-
![]()
Noel Celis / AFP via Getty The New Coronavirus Is a Truly Modern Epidemic
New diseases are mirrors that reflect how a society works—and where it fails.
-
![]()
Diego Herculano / Redux The Deceptively Simple Number Sparking Coronavirus Fears
Here’s what the oft-cited R0 number tells us about the new outbreak—and what it doesn’t.
-
![]()
Njeri Mwangi / Reuters There’s a Perfectly Good Reason to Mass-Produce Snake Venom
Lab-grown glands can now produce realistic cocktails of toxins, which could help address one of the world’s biggest and most neglected health crises.
-
![]()
Saeed Khan / AFP via Getty The Bleak Future of Australian Wildlife
The bushfires were a disaster waiting to happen for animals already fighting for survival.
-
![]()
Courtesy of R. Feord What Scientists Learned by Putting 3-D Glasses on Cuttlefish
They perceive depth in a very different way than we do.
-
![]()
Bruce E. Lyon The Survival Advantage of Being a Fancy Baby Coot
Unlike many other gaudy animal ornaments, the red-and-orange heads of coot chicks are honest indicators of weakness and vulnerability.
-
![]()
Alfred Pasieka / Getty / The Atlantic The Startling Secret of an Invincible Virus
A phage that resists all forms of the antiviral defense known as CRISPR has an unusual means of survival.
-
![]()
M. S. Savoca The Blue Whale’s Heart Beats at Extremes
For the first time, scientists recorded a cardiogram from the largest animal that has ever lived.
-
![]()
Justin A. Morris / Getty What America Lost When It Lost the Bison
By migrating in huge herds, bison behave like a force of nature, engineering and intensifying waves of spring greenery that other grazers rely on.
-
![]()
Arterra / Universal Images Group / Getty Apes Might Know That You Don’t Know What They Know
The latest volley in a decades-long debate about apes’ theory of mind involved one scientist dressing up as King Kong and stealing from his colleague.
-
![]()
Kelly Cheng Travel Photography / Getty Has Humanity’s Homeland Been Found?
A contentious new paper traces the origins of modern humans to ancient wetlands in Africa, a claim other researchers have called far-fetched.
-
![]()
Iain Lawrie / Getty Images A Textbook Evolutionary Story About Moths and Bats Is Wrong
For 50 years, researchers have thought that moths evolved ears to detect the ultrasonic calls of attacking bats—but a new study shows that ears came first.
-
![]()
ROV KIEL 6000 Team / GEOMAR Kiel A Hidden World of Strange Starfish-Like Creatures in the Abyss
It has only now come to light, and could be destroyed if deep-sea mining is allowed to go ahead.
