All Stories
- Neuroscience
How obesity may harm memory and learning
In obese mice, immune cells chomp nerve cell connections and harm brainpower.
- Physics
A new hydrogen-rich compound may be a record-breaking superconductor
The record for the highest-temperature superconductor may be toast.
- Climate
Wildfires make their own weather, and that matters for fire management
Mathematical equations describing interactions between wildfires and the air around them help explain their power and destruction.
- Science & Society
Before it burned, Brazil’s National Museum gave much to science
When Brazil’s National Museum went up in flames, so did the hard work of the researchers who work there.
- Oceans
A massive net is being deployed to pick up plastic in the Pacific
As the Ocean Cleanup project embarks, critics remain unconvinced that scooping up debris is the best way to solve the ocean’s plastic problem.
- Animals
These songbirds violently fling and then impale their prey
A loggerhead shrike that skewers small animals on barbed wire gives mice whiplash shakeups.
- Astronomy
Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins big physics prize for 1967 pulsar discovery
Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell speaks about winning the Breakthrough Prize, impostor syndrome and giving back.
- Agriculture
How plant microbes could feed the world and save endangered species
Scientists have only scratched the surface of the plant microbiome, but they already believe it might increase crop yield and save species from extinction.
- Planetary Science
Saturn has two hexagons, not one, swirling around its north pole
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spied a vortex growing high over Saturn’s north pole, whose hexagonal shape mirrors a famous underlying cyclone.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, a pessimistic view for heart transplants
Surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. In 1968, he predicted that patients would survive five years at best. Fortunately, he was wrong.
- Astronomy
Readers’ interest piqued by Parker Solar Probe, general relativity and more
Readers had questions about NASA's Parker Solar Probe, Einstein's general relativity theory and underwater cables used as earthquake sensors.
- Astronomy
To boldly go where no robot explorer has gone before
Editor in Chief Nancy Shute discusses the importance of robotic space missions for scientific research.
