The Science Life
- Space
To rehearse Perseverance’s mission, scientists pretended to be a Mars rover
Seven Mars scientists pretended to be the Mars Perseverance rover on a training exercise in the Nevada desert.
- Animals
How Yellowstone wolves got their own Ancestry.com page
Since the wolves’ reintroduction to the park, 25 years of devoted watching has chronicled bold moves, big fights and lots of puppies.
- Science & Society
Real-life scientists inspire these comic book superheroes
Three scientists are publishing comics casting researchers as heroes, and hope the cartoon format and pared-down storyline can boost science literacy.
- Ecosystems
Tapirs may be key to reviving the Amazon. All they need to do is poop
Brazilian ecologist Lucas Paolucci is collecting tapir dung to understand how the piglike mammals may help restore degraded rain forests.
- Paleontology
Deep caves are a rich source of dinosaur prints for this paleontologist
Several deep caves in France are proving to be a surprising source of dinosaur tracks.
- Animals
Dancing peacock spiders turned an arachnophobe into an arachnologist
Just 22, Joseph Schubert has described 12 of 86 peacock spider species. One with a blue and yellow abdomen is named after Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
- Climate
These women endured a winter in the high Arctic for citizen science
Two women have spent the winter on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard to collect data for climate scientists around the world.
- Life
Microbiologists took 12 years to grow a microbe tied to complex life’s origins
Years of lab work resulted in growing a type of archaea that might help scientists understand one of evolution’s giant leaps toward complexity.
- Earth
Debate over signs of early life inspires dueling teams to go to Greenland — together
The remote site — which may or may not contain evidence of the most ancient life on Earth — could help scientists plan how to study such signs on Mars.
- Animals
A biochemist’s extraction of data from honey honors her beekeeper father
Tests of proteins in honey could one day be used to figure out what bees are pollinating and which pathogens they carry.
- Animals
Why one biologist chases hurricanes to study spider evolution
For more rigorous spider data, Jonathan Pruitt rushes into the paths of hurricanes.
- Physics
How scientists traced a uranium cube to Nazi Germany’s nuclear reactor program
New research suggests that the Nazis had enough uranium to make a working nuclear reactor.
