Are Socialists Physically Weak?
An intriguing new study has provoked the right-wing blogosphere, but this line of research presents more questions than answers.
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Jim Urquhart / Reuters The Man Who Blew The Door Off The Microbial World
Norm Pace has spent his life as an explorer, charting dangerous caves and ushering in the golden age of microbiology.
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Kim Kyung Hoon / Reuters Half of All Plastic That Has Ever Existed Was Made in the Past 13 Years
Plastic production is rapidly accelerating, according to an ambitious new paper—but only 9 percent of it gets recycled.
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Catherine Losing / Mosaic The Uncertain Future of Genetic Testing
Bringing genetics into medicine leads to more accuracy, better diagnosis, and personalized treatment—but for some, gene testing has only resulted in unanswered questions.
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Courtesy of Earth Observatory of Singapore This Cave Holds a Spectacular Record of 5,000 Years of Tsunamis
A layer cake of bat poop and sand reveals the history of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.
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Ismail Taxta / Reuters Turning Baker’s Yeast Into a Disease Sensor
With a few tweaks, the fungus behind bread and beer could become a simple, low-cost cholera detector.
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NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / ... The Mysterious Origins of Mars’s Trailing Asteroids
A cluster of space rocks orbiting the planet may have come from within the planet itself.
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Carolyn Kaster / AP The Strange Radio Signals Coming From a Nearby Star
Astronomers have detected a mystery transmission at a frequency they haven’t observed before.
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Andrea Marks Resurrecting Ancient Wines That Can Survive Climate Change
A Catalan winery is preparing for the industry’s future by reviving its past.
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Gene Blevins / Reuters How to Find the Smallest Stars in the Universe
While looking for exoplanets, astronomers discovered the tiniest star ever found, just slightly bigger than Saturn.
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David Moir / Reuters How the Internet Deciphered a Fake Alien Message
Dozens of people answered an astrophysicist’s call to decrypt a transmission from an imaginary civilization 50 light-years away.
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Andrew Winning What Would It Take to Completely Sterilize the Earth?
Three astrophysicists calculate that even huge asteroids and exploding stars probably wouldn’t wipe out all life.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters Ravens Can Plan for the Future
They join an elite group of animals that includes great apes, but not monkeys or 3-year-old human children.
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NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt The Closest-Ever Shot of the Great Red Spot
The Juno spacecraft has returned stunning images of Jupiter’s best-known feature.
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Library of Congress Scientists Can Use CRISPR to Store Images and Movies in Bacteria
It’s a step toward turning microbes into living hard drives.
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Spencer Platt / Getty Why Are There So Many More Species on Land When the Sea Is Bigger?
Most of the Earth’s surface is ocean. Life began there. But marine life accounts for only 15 percent of the world’s species.
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Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Jill Tarter, Feminist Cosmic Icon
A new book about the astronomer describes the struggles she faced while trying to answer one question: Are we alone in the universe?
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Martin Parsekian / Wildlife Conservation Society / The ... The Weird Scientific Illustrations That Shaped Pop Culture
A century ago, a small but influential group of artists and researchers teamed up to discover and introduce strange new species to the public.
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Edgar Su / Reuters How Mentorship Looks Different in the Sciences
A conversation with two immunologists about the “little digressions” that shape their research and careers
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Bettmann / Getty Did a Glowing Sea Creature Help Push the U.S. Into the Vietnam War?
A marine biologist might have a clue to who—or what—was responsible for one of America’s most infamous war mysteries.
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Gabriella Marks / Quanta Magazine The Countless Computers Embedded in Nature
An evolutionary biologist studies how flocks of birds, slime molds, networks of neurons, and other biological collectives jointly process information.
