All Stories
- Plants
Check out 6 ways orchids use tricks to reproduce
This spring, these six orchids will lure pollinators with mimicry, scent or other unusual strategies.
- Animals
Mosquitoes get the ‘I’m full’ signal from their butts, not their brains
Mosquitoes stop feeding because signals from rectal cells tell them they’re full, offering a target for preventing human bites.
- Health & Medicine
GLP-1 microdosers are chasing longevity
Experimenters hope to harness the powerful effects of medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy at doses smaller than those studied most.
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Math puzzle: Fresh gridflowers
Solve the math puzzle from our April 2026 issue, where we plant floras to celebrate an upcoming nuptial.
- Archaeology
A new study questions when people first reached South America
Data suggest people lived at Chile’s Monte Verde site thousands of years later than thought, challenging key “pre-Clovis” evidence. Not all agree.
- Earth
Earth’s continental plates were moving 3.48 billion years ago
Magnetic crystals provide the earliest evidence yet of the plate tectonics that likely made Earth habitable, pushing its start back by 140 million years.
- Microbes
How warming is shifting microbial worlds
Climate change is affecting microbes, and that has implications for all life on Earth.
- Physics
A static electricity mystery comes to the surface
Seemingly random charging of identical materials depends on the carbonaceous molecules stuck to their surfaces
- Earth
To make a ‘Snowball Earth,’ sci-fi moves fast. Geology is far slower
The Day After Tomorrow, Snowpiercer, Snowball Earth: Such end-of-days visions of a frozen Earth are fantastical … but can contain a snowflake of truth.
- Animals
Sharks are ingesting drugs in the Bahamas
Nearly one third of sharks studied near the Bahamas’ Eleuthera Island were found to have caffeine, painkillers and other drugs in their bloodstreams.
- Animals
Platypus fur has a surprising feature seen only in bird feathers
Platypuses are the first mammals known to have hollow melanosomes, pigment-bearing structures found in the hair of many animals.
- Climate
City skylines influence cloud formation above them
Satellite data show that U.S. cities have more nighttime cloud cover than nearby countryside, and building height and density help explain why.
