Helen Thompson is the multimedia editor at Science News. She makes videos, creates data visuals, helps manage the website, 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.

All Stories by Helen Thompson

  1. Animals

    Why bats crash into windows

    Smooth, vertical surfaces may be blind spots for bats and cause some animals to face-plant, study suggests.

  2. Archaeology

    Ancient mud documents the legacy of Rome’s lead pipes

    Researchers used lead levels in Rome’s ancient harbors to track lead pipe use and urbanization.

  3. Astronomy

    Here’s what the Science News family did for the eclipse

    On August 21, 2017, the path of a total solar eclipse went coast to coast across the United States. Here are our dispatches.

  4. Animals

    Giant larvaceans could be ferrying ocean plastic to the seafloor

    Giant larvaceans could mistakenly capture microplastics, in addition to food, in their mucus houses and transfer them to the seafloor in their feces.

  5. Animals

    Why midsize animals are the fastest

    New analysis delves into the mystery of why medium-sized animals are speedier than bigger ones.

  6. Planetary Science

    What Curiosity has yet to tell us about Mars

    Curiosity has revealed a lot about Mars in the last five years. But NASA’s rover still has work to do on the Red Planet.

  7. Tech

    This robot grows like a plant

    A new soft robot navigates its environment by growing in a manner inspired by plants.

  8. Agriculture

    GM moth trial gets a green light from USDA

    GM diamondback moths will take wing in a New York field trial.

  9. Genetics

    CRISPR adds storing movies to its feats of molecular biology

    Video and images could be stored in living bacteria with a little help from the iconic gene editor, CRISPR.

  10. Animals

    Male cockatoos have the beat

    Male cockatoos tap trees to a beat to get girls.

  11. Animals

    Facial recognition changes a wasp’s brain

    A new study maps genes at play in a paper wasp’s brain during facial recognition.

  12. Paleontology

    Primitive whales had mediocre hearing

    Fossils suggest that early whale hearing was run-of-the-mill, along the same line as that of land mammals.