McKenzie Prillaman

Staff Writer

McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC, who interned at Science News in spring 2023. She holds a degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and studied adolescent nicotine dependence at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. After figuring out she’d rather explain scientific research than conduct it, she worked at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and then earned a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work has appeared in Nature, Scientific American, The Cancer Letter and The Mercury News, among other publications.

All Stories by McKenzie Prillaman

  1. Planetary Science

    A giant planet may orbit our closest sunlike neighbor

    Alpha Centauri A, four light-years from Earth, may host a gas giant. If confirmed, no Earthlike planets orbit in the star’s habitable zone.

  2. Astronomy

    Seven superclouds sit just beyond the solar system

    The superclouds probably produce star-forming clouds of gas, since most nearby stellar nurseries are located within the giants.

  3. Astronomy

    The Webb space telescope spies its first black holes snacking on stars

    These star-shredding black holes sit within dusty galaxies that block many telescopes’ views. That’s not an issue for JWST.

  4. Astronomy

    Two colliding galaxies may have birthed this black hole

    An infinity symbol–shaped galaxy hosts an active supermassive black hole. The growing giant may have come from the aftermath of a galactic smashup.

  5. Planetary Science

    This star offers the earliest peek at the birth of a planetary system like ours

    A young sunlike star called HOPS 315 seems to host a swirling disk of gas giving rise to minerals that kick-start the planet formation process.

  6. Planetary Science

    New Horizons visited Pluto 10 years ago. We’re still learning from it

    Over the past decade, researchers have been puzzling through Pluto’s mysteries. Meanwhile, the New Horizons probe heads for interstellar space.

  7. Astronomy

    Nearly half of the universe’s ordinary matter was uncharted, until now

    Two studies fill in gaps about the cosmos’s ordinary matter. One maps it all, even the “missing matter.” The other details one of its hiding spots.

  8. Astronomy

    A rare chance to see two exploding stars is happening in the southern sky

    Exploding stars V462 Lupi and V572 Velorum are best seen from the Southern Hemisphere. One has been spotted from the United States.

  9. Astronomy

    Two spacecraft created their first images of an artificial solar eclipse

    The Proba-3 spacecraft succeed at creating solar eclipses, kicking off a two-year mission to study the sun’s mysterious outer atmosphere, the corona.

  10. Space

    Distant nebulae star in one of the first images from the Rubin Observatory

    These are the first public images collected by the Chile-based observatory, which will begin a decade-long survey of the southern sky later this year.

  11. Astronomy

    Black hole–shredded megastars power a new class of cosmic explosions

    These explosions, called extreme nuclear transients, shine for longer than typical supernovas and get 30 to 1,000 times as bright.

  12. Space

    Here’s how a collision of star remnants launches a gleaming jet

    A computer simulation shows how two neutron stars of unequal mass merge, form a black hole and spit out a jet of high energy matter.