Feature

  1. Planetary Science

    Year in review: Global ocean spans Enceladus

    NASA's Cassini spacecraft is offering the best evidence yet that Saturn's moon Enceladus could be a great place to search for extraterrestrial life.

    By Alexandra Witze
  2. Life

    Year in review: Microbe discoveries spur rethink of treetop of life

    Microbes discovered in Arctic mud this year could be the closest relatives yet found to the single-celled ancestor that made life so complicated.

    By Susan Milius
  3. Quantum Physics

    Year in review: Quantum spookiness is real

    A new version of an experiment proposed in 1964 confirmed a counterintuitive tenet of quantum mechanics.

    By Andrew Grant
  4. Genetics

    Year in review: Epigenome makes its debut

    The Roadmap Epigenomics Project, unveiled in February 2015, is the first in a series of 3-D looks at the human genome.