All Stories
- Archaeology
Ancient bacterial DNA hints Europe’s Black Death started in Central Asia
Archaeological and genetic data pin the origins of Europe’s 1346–1353 bubonic plague to a bacterial strain found in graves in Asia from the 1330s.
- Animals
Butterflies may lose their ‘tails’ like lizards
Fragile, tail-like projections on some butterflies' wings may be a lifesaver.
- Life
Lucy Cooke’s new book ‘Bitch’ busts myths about female animals
Female animals get their due in Lucy Cooke’s exploration of the roles of the sexes in biology and evolution.
- Astronomy
A celestial loner might be the first known rogue black hole
The object could be the first isolated stellar-mass black hole identified in the Milky Way — or it might be an unusually heavy neutron star.
- Physics
Why even small sonic booms are more annoying in cities
Quieter sonic booms from next-generation planes could still be annoying in cities thanks to narrow streets and tall buildings, simulations suggest.
- Astronomy
New Gaia data paint the most detailed picture yet of the Milky Way
Gaia’s new data can tell us about galaxies the Milky Way has swallowed, the young solar system and asteroids that could hit Earth.
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Predicting the damage caused by extreme storms
Editor in chief Nancy Shute discusses how scientists are figuring out how to predict the effects of extreme hurricanes.
- Health & Medicine
Nasal vaccines for COVID-19 offer hope and face hurdles
A squirt up the nose could reduce virus transmission, but like shots in the arm, the nasal vaccines have challenges to overcome.
- Physics
Scientists created ‘smoke rings’ of light
A swirling doughnut of light shows that vortex rings aren’t just for fluids anymore.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum physics exponentially improves some types of machine learning
It wasn’t entirely clear if quantum computers could improve machine learning in practice, but new experiments and theoretical proofs show that it can.
- Planetary Science
Samples of the asteroid Ryugu are scientists’ purest pieces of the solar system
Samples Hayabusa2 brought to Earth from asteroid Ryugu are far fresher than similar types of meteorites that scientists have found.
