The Lab Discovering DNA in Old Books
Even the beeswax used in seals is rich with data about the past, including the flowers that grew in that region year to year
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Projects
Life Up Close
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Glenn Harvey Death-Cap Mushrooms Are Spreading Across North America
“There’s nothing in the taste that tells you what you are eating is about to kill you.”
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Tim Caro The Surprising Reason Zebras Have Stripes
By putting black-and-white coats on horses, a new study shows that the pattern discourages biting flies from landing.
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JPL / NASA A City-Size Moon Was Hiding Around Neptune
Even to the most powerful telescopes, little Hippocamp appears only as a fuzzy dot in photos.
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John Trumbull / Caitlin Ochs / Eric Vidall ... A Centuries-Old Idea Could Revolutionize Climate Policy
The Green New Deal’s mastermind is a precocious New Yorker with big ambitions. Sound familiar?
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Chris McLoughlin / Getty Is the Insect Apocalypse Really Upon Us?
Claims that insects will disappear within a century are absurd, but the reality isn’t reassuring either.
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Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Zambia’s Most Famous Skulls Might Finally Be Headed Home
Some scientists think the Kabwe skull could be an evolutionary link between humans and Neanderthals. It hasn’t left the U.K. in nearly a century.
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NASA / studiovin / Shutterstock / Katie Martin ... I Fell Under the Spell of NASA’s Most Notorious Thief
Before Thad Roberts stole more than $20 million worth of moon rocks and Martian meteorites, he made me want to reach for the stars.
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NASA / JPL-Caltech NASA Declares a Beloved Mars Mission Over
The space agency will stop trying to contact the Opportunity rover, which was sent to Mars to search for evidence of water.
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Hinterhaus Productions / Getty Small Teams of Scientists Have Fresher Ideas
A new study shows that little teams are more likely to take their research in radically new directions.
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NASA/JPL-Caltech The Bizarre Planets That Could Be Humanity’s New Homes
What would human civilization look like on a tidally locked world?
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Eduardo Munoz / Reuters The East Coast Is Going to Get Arkansas-ified
A new study finds the climate “twin city” for hundreds of places across the United States.
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Johnson Space Center / NASA A Very Relatable Moment on the International Space Station
Even astronauts have to deal with plumbing problems.
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Robert F. Bukaty / AP Cashing In on a Warming Arctic
In Maine, some see the melting ice to the north as an opportunity.
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Bettmann / Getty The Women Who Contributed to Science but Were Buried in Footnotes
In a new study, researchers uncovered female programmers who made important but unrecognized contributions to genetics.
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Getty / Life on White Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition
What science can tell us about how other creatures experience the world
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Kevin Mazur / Getty Images A Space Nerd’s Reading of Ariana Grande’s ‘NASA’ Song
The singer says she’s a star. But what kind?
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Shutterstock The Reason Some Hyperlocal Languages Survive
Uncommon tongues are more likely to last when young people are actively speaking them.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters The Millennial Era of Climate Politics Has Arrived
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outlines the fuzzy edges of a new “green dream.”
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Marvin Recinos / Getty A New Way to Keep Mosquitoes From Biting
An appetite-suppressing drug makes them act as if they’ve already feasted on blood.
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This Dinosaur Had a Mohawk of Horns
A pair of two-foot-long spines, running down the neck of Bajadasaurus, might have presented a “disturbing fence” to lurking predators.
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Associated Press / AP The Gene That Turns Bees Mean
Only a tiny difference separates docile workers from those that can dethrone a queen.
