The Ancient Math That Sets the Date of Easter and Passover
Why don’t the two holidays always coincide? It is, to some degree, the moon’s fault.
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Lidia Tomashevskaya The Most Political Animal
Even in one of the world’s richest countries, humans have a hard time coexisting with wolves.
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Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty ... A Soda Company’s Long Obsession With Outer Space
A proposal for a space-based ad is only the latest iteration of Pepsi’s fascination with the skies.
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Dave J Hogan / Getty The Predator That Makes Great White Sharks Flee in Fear
Better to run than to have your liver squeezed out.
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Wally Santana / AP Puppy Sacrifice Was Widespread During the Shang Dynasty
Juvenile canines might have been a cheaper alternative to full-grown dogs.
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Mary Stiner / Asikli Hoyuk project photo archive Why Archaeologists Are Studying 10,000-Year-Old Urine
The history of animal domestication might be recorded in ancient pee.
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Denis Balibouse / Reuters Scientists Partly Restore Activity in Dead-Pig Brains
Now what?
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Ivan Alvarado / Reuters The Cataclysmic Break That (Maybe) Occurred in 1950
Sixty-nine years ago, a new geological era may have begun on Earth.
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Agami / Diana Carpenter / Eric Isselee / ... The Least Popular Birds in the U.S. Deserve Some Love
They may be small, drab, and shy, but somebody’s got to stand up for them.
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Mayako Kutsukake Exploding Aphids Plaster Holes in Their Home With Bodily Fluids
In an extreme version of the clotting process, the bugs suicidally erupt to save their nest.
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D3sign / Getty / EHT / National Science ... The Dark Saga of Katie Bouman
How a young scientist got sucked into the black hole of the internet
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Avrajjal Ghosh / Barcroft India / Barcroft Media ... The Hitler Beetle and Other Oddities of Scientific Naming
No rules stop researchers—or even anyone who wins an auction—from giving new species any moniker they like.
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Courtesy of Haystack Observatory The Hidden Shipping and Handling Behind That Black-Hole Picture
The mesmerizing image of a cosmic wonder required a rather old-school approach to piece together.
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Mike Coppola / Getty A Natural-History Museum Is Under Fire for Hosting Brazil's New President
Critics say that a planned event at the American Museum of Natural History honoring Jair Bolsonaro is antithetical to the institute’s mission and values.
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Charlie Riedel / AP An Abrupt End to a Historic Moon Mission
Beresheet, a lander made by an Israeli nonprofit, was just miles from the lunar surface when it malfunctioned.
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Esther Aarts Human Drugs Are Polluting the Water—And Animals Are Swimming in It
Salmon on psychotropics, platypuses on prozac, and other strange tales from the wild
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ROBERT MARKOWITZ / AFP / Getty / The ... What a Year in Space Did to Scott Kelly
An unprecedented and illuminating study monitored identical twins, one in space and one on Earth.
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Oosterhof et al / American Journal of Human ... The Boy Missing an Entire Type of Brain Cell
Microglia make up 10 percent of the brain, and an extremely rare case shows just how important they are.
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Claire Bentley / Planet What Spy-Satellite Companies Can Teach NASA About Climate Change
The space agency is exploring what three Earth-observation start-ups can teach it about the planet.
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Paulo Whitaker / Reuters Tiny Bees Fed On a Woman’s Tears—But Nature Gets Worse
Here are six other living things you don’t want to get stuck in your eye.
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CDC / Pete Wardell When Gut Bacteria Betray Their Hosts
Decades after a deadly outbreak, a researcher found a key clue to its cause inside frozen microbes.
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Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al An Extraordinary Image of the Black Hole at a Galaxy’s Heart
Never before have scientists photographed the darkest points in the universe.
