
Helen Thompson is the associate digital editor at Science News. She helps manage the website, makes videos, builds interactives, wrangles cats and occasionally writes about things like dandelion flight and whale evolution. She has undergraduate degrees in biology and English from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and strong opinions about tacos. Before Science News, she wrote for Smithsonian, NPR.org, National Geographic, Nature and others.

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All Stories by Helen Thompson
- Animals
See (and hear) the stunning diversity of bowhead whales’ songs
Bowhead whales display a huge range in their underwater melodies, but the drivers behind this diversity remain murky.
- Genetics
Cicadas on different schedules can hybridize
A new genetic study suggests that cicadas that emerge every 17 years have swapped genetic material with those that emerge every 13 years.
- Health & Medicine
A new coronavirus is killing pigs in China
Genetic evidence identifies a previously unknown coronavirus that’s causing problems in pigs.
- Environment
The great Pacific garbage patch may be 16 times as massive as we thought
The giant garbage patch between Hawaii and California weighs at least 79,000 tons, a new estimate suggests.
- Animals
How oral vaccines could save Ethiopian wolves from extinction
A mass oral vaccination program in Ethiopian wolves could pave the way for other endangered species and help humans, too.
- Planetary Science
How a vaporized Earth might have cooked up the moon
A high-speed collision turned the early Earth into a hot, gooey space doughnut, and the moon formed within this synestia, a new simulation suggests.
- Paleontology
Fossil footprints may put lizards on two feet 110 million years ago
Fossilized footprints found in South Korea could be the earliest evidence of two-legged running in lizards.
- Earth
Robots map largest underwater volcanic eruption in 100 years
High-resolution mapping of a 2012 underwater volcanic eruption just goes to show there’s a lot we don’t know about deep-sea volcanism.
- Science & Society
Watch our most-viewed videos of 2017
Cassini’s demise, cuttlefish and the Curiosity rover topped our list of most popular videos of 2017.
- Health & Medicine
The man flu struggle might be real, says one researcher
A researcher reviews the evidence for gender bias among flu viruses in the BMJ’s lighthearted holiday edition.
- Animals
Once settled, immigrants play important guard roles in mongoose packs
Dwarf mongoose packs ultimately benefit from taking in immigrants, but there’s an assimilation period.
- Animals
Crested pigeons sound the alarm with their wings
Crested pigeons have specialized feathers that signal danger when they flee from an apparent threat.