Alexandra Witze

Contributing Correspondent

Alexandra Witze is a contributing correspondent based in Boulder, Colorado. Among other exotic locales, her reporting has taken her to Maya ruins in the jungles of Guatemala, among rotting corpses at the University of Tennessee's legendary "Body Farm," and to a floating sea-ice camp at the North Pole. She has a bachelor's degree in geology from MIT and a graduate certification in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her honors are the Science-in-Society award from the National Association of Science Writers (shared with Tom Siegfried), and the American Geophysical Union's award for feature journalism. She coauthored the book Island on Fire, about the 18th-century eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki.

All Stories by Alexandra Witze

  1. Space

    At Home in the Universe

    Astronomers lay bare the Milky Way’s biggest secrets.

  2. Physics

    Quantum teleportation leaps forward

    Two teams report beaming information about particles over long distances, a step toward creating satellite quantum communication networks.

  3. Astronomy

    Milky Way will be hit head-on

    The Andromeda galaxy is destined to slam directly into ours, new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show.

  4. Earth

    Supervolcanoes evolve superquickly

    Huge underground chambers of magma appear and erupt within just several centuries, a study of California rocks suggests.

  5. Tech

    DNA used as rewritable data storage in cells

    Genetically encoded memory could track cell division inside the body.

  6. Storm Front

    Hurricane experts push to improve intensity forecasts.

  7. Chemistry

    Dancing droplets reveal physics at work

    Magnetic fields can deflect liquid oxygen subject to the unusual “Leidenfrost effect.”

  8. Earth

    Natural sinks still sopping up carbon

    Ecosystems haven’t yet maxed out their ability to absorb fossil fuel emissions, new calculations suggest.

  9. Oceans

    Director’s exploration of the abyss goes deeper than Hollywood glitz

  10. Physics

    Physicists go totally random

    Calculations suggest a way to boost the independence of information flow, a finding that could help in cryptography.

  11. Earth

    Stop-and-go plate tectonics

    Early on, ancient crustal plates may have dived deep into the Earth, time and again, giving a halting start to the planetary remodeling process.

  12. Astronomy

    When solar storms pummel Earth, there’s usually no need to panic