photo of Ashley Yeager

Ashley Yeager

Associate News Editor

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. Previously, she worked at The Scientist, where she was an associate editor for nearly three years. She has also worked as a freelance editor and writer, and as a writer at the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory. She was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015, and was an intern at the magazine in the summer of 2008. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Her book, Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter and Beyond, on the life of astronomer Vera Rubin, will be published by MIT Press in August.

All Stories by Ashley Yeager

  1. Physics

    Scientists create the most cubic form of ice crystals yet

    Ice has taken on a strange structure, with its water molecules arranged in nearly perfect cubes.

  2. Planetary Science

    Mars has nighttime snow storms

    When clouds of water-ice particles cool at night, snow starts to fall rapidly on Mars, simulations suggest. The squalls could explain observations made by the Phoenix lander in 2008.

  3. Planetary Science

    Moon had a magnetic field for at least a billion years longer than thought

    The moon’s magnetic field could have lasted until about a billion years ago.

  4. Animals

    Fossil find suggests this ancient reptile lurked on land, not in the water

    An exquisitely preserved fossil shows that an ancient armored reptile called Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi wasn’t aquatic, as scientists had suspected.

  5. Climate

    South Asia could face deadly heat and humidity by the end of this century

    If climate change is left unchecked, simulations show extreme heat waves in densely populated agricultural regions of India and Pakistan. 

  6. Plants

    A new portrait of the world’s first flower is unveiled

    A reconstruction of the first flowers suggests the ancient blooms were bisexual.

  7. Planetary Science

    Evidence mounts for an ocean on early Venus

    Not long after its birth, Venus may have rocked a water ocean, new simulations suggest.

  8. Astronomy

    Half of the Milky Way comes from other galaxies

    A galaxy may swipe up to half of its atoms from other galaxies, making the Milky Way mostly extragalactic stuff, new simulations suggest.

  9. Planetary Science

    More hints of Martian hot springs may hold promise for Mars 2020 mission

    An analysis of ridges in a crater of Margaritifer Terra on Mars offers evidence of ancient hot springs and also hints at the potential for finding signs of life.

  10. Astronomy

    Fewer big rogue planets roam the galaxy, recount shows

    Jupiter-mass planets without parent solar systems are less common than astronomers thought, a new study suggests.

  11. Planetary Science

    Earth might once have resembled a hot, steamy doughnut

    Newly proposed space objects called synestias are large, spinning hunks of mostly vaporized rock. They look like a jelly-filled doughnut.

  12. Genetics

    These genes may be why dogs are so friendly

    Dog domestication may be the result of just a few genetic changes, including ones that made canines more interested in interacting with people.