All Stories
- Earth
By 2100, damaged corals may let waves twice as tall as today’s reach coasts
Structurally complex coral reefs can defend coasts against waves, even as sea levels rise.
- Astronomy
Massive stellar flare may have fried Earth’s nearest exoplanet
A massive flare made Proxima Centauri 1,000 times brighter in 10 seconds, dimming hopes that its planet may be habitable.
- Artificial Intelligence
In the future, an AI may diagnose eye problems
Artificial intelligence could help diagnose blinding eye diseases and other illnesses, speeding up medical care in areas where specialists might be scarce.
- Earth
Critter-finding mission to Antarctica’s Larsen C iceberg scrapped
Thick sea ice ended a rapid-response mission to study seafloor that lay beneath Larsen C iceberg.
- Animals
Penguin supercolony discovered in Antarctica
Scientists have found a penguin supercolony living on tiny, remote Antarctic islands.
- Physics
Knotted structures called skyrmions seem to mimic ball lightning
Skyrmions in a quantum state of matter have something surprising in common with ball lightning — linked magnetic fields.
- Astronomy
Loner gas clouds could be a new kind of stellar system
Weird loner clumps of gas that have wandered for 1 billion years may have been stripped from a trio of larger galaxies.
- Planetary Science
How a vaporized Earth might have cooked up the moon
A high-speed collision turned the early Earth into a hot, gooey space doughnut, and the moon formed within this synestia, a new simulation suggests.
- Chemistry
Extreme cold is no match for a new battery
A rechargeable battery that works at –70° C could be used in some of the coldest places on Earth or other planets.
- Earth
Early land plants led to the rise of mud
New research suggests early land plants called bryophytes, which include modern mosses, helped shape Earth’s surface by creating clay-rich river deposits.
- Animals
It’s official: Termites are just cockroaches with a fancy social life
On their latest master list of arthropods, U.S. entomologists have finally declared termites to be a kind of cockroach.
- Animals
A new species of tardigrade lays eggs covered with doodads and streamers
These elegant eggs hint that a tardigrade found in a Japanese parking lot is a new species.
