An Invader’s Less-Than-Elegant Move From Water to Land
The much-maligned northern snakehead fish might be less menacing than it was made out to be.
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Projects
Life Up Close
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Glenn Harvey The Next Olympics Mascot Might Have Been a Mutant Morning Glory
Scientists dreamed of genetically engineering a flower patterned in the Games’ blue-and-white checkerboard emblem.
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Maciej Rebisz Three Physicists Stumbled Upon a Striking Mathematical Discovery
Describing neutrino oscillations is notoriously tricky. The search for a shortcut led to unexpected places.
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Erin Scott / Reuters So Has the Green New Deal Won Yet?
Since it debuted a year ago, the idea has lost, and won, and could lose again.
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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.
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NASA The Second Moon Landing Was Much Rowdier
With a successful first mission in the books, the crew of Apollo 12 was under less pressure.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters How to Cut U.S. Carbon Pollution by Nearly 40 Percent in 10 Years
A bill in Congress could slash American greenhouse-gas emissions. It’s even bipartisan—if you squint.
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Jeff Haynes / Reuters What to Do With That Rotting Pumpkin Corpse
Millions end up rotting in landfills. But Halloween’s leftover pumpkins don’t have to go to waste.
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Bettmann / Getty Images The Most Delicious Foods That No Longer Exist
Humans have eaten thousands of species into extinction. Some, supposedly, were to die for.
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Ron Wooten The Secret Identity of a Coyote-Like Creature
A photographer began shooting unusual-looking coyotes on Galveston Island. They turned out to be descended from a very rare wolf species.
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Toru Yamanaka / Getty A Crucial Blind Spot in Veterinary Medicine
The placebo effect shows up in pets too, but these treatments are fooling owners, not their animals.
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NASA NASA’s Grueling Underwater Test for Astronauts
A giant swimming pool is the best place on Earth for simulating weightlessness.
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Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Trump Isn’t a Climate Denier. He’s Worse.
The president is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change because he just can’t quit carbon.
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Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks / AP The Grizzlies Are Coming
Electric fences and bear-resistant garbage cans are helping humans in Montana adjust to the new normal.
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Stefano De Luigi / VII / Redux $166 Water Could Dictate International Iceberg Law
High-end start-ups and far-flung tycoons are rushing to cash in on the Arctic’s frozen treasures. Regulators are struggling to keep up.
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Noah Berger / AP The Smoldering State
California doesn’t know how to run a power grid in the climate century. But no one else does, either.
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Eric Nyquist Deadly Algae Are Creeping Northward
In a warming ocean, Alexandrium algae are shredding marine food webs—and disrupting beloved Alaska traditions.
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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.
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Eric Risberg / AP The Rise and Fall and Rise of the American Tiki Bar
Kitschy faux-Polynesian drinks have made a dramatic comeback, and it began with one man’s fixation on Don the Beachcomber.
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Cigdem Sean Cooper / Getty Why the Search for Dark Matter Depends on Ancient Shipwrecks
Errant particles from everyday radioactive materials are a major obstacle for particle physicists. The solution? Lead from the bottom of the sea.
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USDA Forest Service The Forest Service Is About to Set a Giant Forest Fire—On Purpose
A man-made blaze on a remote Utah mountainside could provide valuable insights into the behavior of the powerful wildfires growing more and more common out West.
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NASA / Reuters The Worst Day in Earth’s History Contains an Ominous Warning
One of the planet’s most dramatic extinctions was caused in part by ocean acidification, which has become a problem in our own era.
