All Stories
- Climate
A UN report says stopping climate change is possible but action is needed now
We already have a broad array of tools to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, a new report finds. Now we just have to use them.
- Health & Medicine
We can do better than what was ‘normal’ before the pandemic
With all that people have endured, it would be a missed opportunity to toss aside what we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Space
Binary stars keep masquerading as black holes
The drive to find black holes in ever-larger astronomy datasets is leading some researchers astray.
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In Pandemic Year Three, still so many questions
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses what we've learned about COVID-19, and what questions remain in the pandemic's third year.
- Climate
A global warming pause that didn’t happen hampered climate science
Trying to explain why global warming appeared to slow down in the early 2000s distracted scientists and shook their confidence.
- Humans
Where you grew up may shape your navigational skills
People raised in cities with simple, gridlike layouts were worse at navigating in a video game designed for studying the brain.
- Astronomy
When the Magellanic Clouds cozy up to each other, stars are born
The Magellanic Clouds, the two closest star-making galaxies to the Milky Way, owe much of their stellar creativity to each other.
- Genetics
We finally have a fully complete human genome
Finding the missing 8 percent of the human genome gives researchers a more powerful tool to better understand human health, disease and evolution.
- Paleontology
Mammals’ bodies outpaced their brains right after the dinosaurs died
Fossils show that mammals’ brains and bodies did not balloon together. The animals’ brains grew bigger later.
- Science & Society
Here are the Top 10 times scientific imagination failed
Some scientists of the past couldn’t imagine that atoms or gravity waves could one day be studied – or nuclear energy harnessed.
- Anthropology
North America’s oldest skull surgery dates to at least 3,000 years ago
Bone regrowth suggests the man, who lived in what’s now Alabama, survived a procedure to treat brain swelling by scraping a hole out of his forehead.
