Geology’s Timekeepers Are Feuding
“It’s a bit like Monty Python.”
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Projects
Life Up Close
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Sarah Gilman South America's Otherworldly Seabird
To save the tiny seabird, scientists are venturing to its secret home in the Atacama Desert—and sticking their noses into a lot of stinky holes in the ground.
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Thomas Mukoya / Reuters Humans Have Unleashed a ‘Landscape of Fear’
By killing the biggest animals, we’ve allowed smaller and more vulnerable species to remodel the terrain.
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Luiz Rocha / California Academy of Sciences There Is No Escape for Corals
Deep waters have long been seen as potential refuges for endangered corals, but a new study suggests that they offer no sanctuary.
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Courtesy of Undark / Ryan Moehring / USFWS The Crime-Fighting Power of Dead, Stuffed Animals
Exchanging wildlife specimens with museums and zoos can help law enforcement stop smugglers.
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Graham Beards / Wikimedia How Viruses Cooperate to Defeat CRISPR
Some weaken their hosts’ immune systems by sacrificing themselves in kamikaze fashion, paving the way for successful infections later.
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Nikola Solic / Reuters The Mystery of How Neanderthals Got Fire
Fifty-thousand-year-old tools suggest that modern humans weren't prehistory's only pyros.
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Kaeli Swift Crows Sometimes Have Sex With Their Dead
It can get aggressive.
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Jeff Swensen / Stringer / Getty Even Geologists Hate the EPA’s New Science Rule
Dozens of scientific and medical groups oppose the proposal, which began under former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
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NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt ... A Flurry of Tiny Moons Around Jupiter
Four hundred years after Galileo discovered the planet’s biggest satellites, astronomers are still finding the smallest ones.
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Catherine St. Clair / Prokrida / Shutterstock / ... When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity
“Each person comes into our group thinking they are a freak.”
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Albert Tercero / Mosaic When Genetic Diseases Threaten Patient Privacy
Do children have a right to their parents’ medical information?
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David Parry / Reuters The Farcical Battle Over What to Call Lab-Grown Meat
The FDA held a public meeting to talk about it, but no one could agree on what to call it.
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DESY, Science Communication Lab Tiny Cosmic Particle Delivers Major Breakthrough in Astronomy
For the first time, astronomers have traced a neutrino back to its birthplace, billions of light-years across the universe.
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Toby Melville / Reuters ‘Find Your Passion’ Is Awful Advice
A major new study questions the common wisdom about how we should choose our careers.
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Ernesto Benavides / Getty Even More Evidence for the Link Between Alzheimer’s and Herpes
Several new studies have rejuvenated a long-dismissed idea that links the common brain disease to the viral infections.
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Zhaoyu Zhu et al / Nature Ancient Humans Lived in China 2.1 Million Years Ago
The discovery of stone tools—the oldest ever found outside of Africa—dramatically shifts the story of hominin migration, researchers say.
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Eddie Keogh / Reuters Could Ancient Humans Have Lived as Long as We Do?
Across time and place, our species’ life span is remarkably consistent.
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Nick Graham How Rats Remake Coral Reefs
By eating seabirds, the rodents weaken the flow of nutrients into the oceans, endangering coral reefs and the fish that live there.
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Ryan Somma / Flickr / Katie Martin / ... The New Story of Humanity's Origins in Africa
Several new discoveries suggest that our species didn’t arise from a single point in space. Instead, the entire continent was our cradle.
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NASA / JPL–Caltech / GSFC / JAXA Astronomers Can’t Decide What the Sun Is Made Of
The concentration of metals in our star will determine when it dies, but scientists struggle to settle on an estimate.
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Leah Millis / Reuters Brett Kavanaugh: ‘The Earth Is Warming’
Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court affirms climate change—but that’s not necessarily good news for the EPA.
