All Stories
- Humans
Here’s where things stand on COVID-19 tests in the U.S.
Government officials are weighing how to loosen social distancing measures across the United States, but that hinges on widespread COVID-19 testing.
- Chemistry
Ancient recipes led scientists to a long-lost natural blue
Led by medieval texts, scientists hunted down a plant and extracted from its tiny fruits a blue watercolor whose origins had long been a mystery.
- Space
A weird stellar explosion may have caused the brightest supernova yet seen
Astronomers may have spotted the first known example of a rare “pulsational pair-instability” supernova.
- Health & Medicine
Why 6 feet may not be enough social distance to avoid COVID-19
Scientists who study airflow warn that virus-laden drops may travel farther than thought.
- Climate
Climate change made a southwestern U.S. drought one of the worst in 1,200 years
Tree ring records show that the 2000–2018 drought in southwestern North America is among the most severe to strike the region in over a millennium.
- Earth
Forecasters predict a very active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season
Warmer ocean temperatures could fuel a very active Atlantic hurricane season, with one forecast predicting 18 named storms, including nine hurricanes.
- Astronomy
New images of the sun reveal superfine threads of glowing plasma
Snapshots from NASA’s High-Resolution Coronal Imager show thin filaments of plasma not seen before in the sun’s outer atmosphere.
- Physics
A star orbiting the Milky Way’s giant black hole confirms Einstein was right
An oddity previously seen in Mercury’s orbit has been spotted in a star circling the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center.
- Health & Medicine
COVID-19 may be most contagious one to two days before symptoms appear
The coronavirus probably spreads the most before symptoms appear, making containing viral transmission harder.
- Quantum Physics
New quantum computers can operate at higher temperatures
Silicon chips operate at higher temperatures than many others, raising hopes for building quantum integrated circuits.
- Animals
Dancing peacock spiders turned an arachnophobe into an arachnologist
Just 22, Joseph Schubert has described 12 of 86 peacock spider species. One with a blue and yellow abdomen is named after Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
- Space
‘Spacefarers’ predicts how space colonization will happen
In Spacefarers, Christopher Wanjek provides an optimistic yet realistic view on how humans might colonize the rest of our solar system.
