All Stories
- Archaeology
Indigenous input revealed early hints of fiber making in the tropics
To decipher marks on nearly 40,000-year-old stone tools and figure out what they were used for, researchers turned to the Philippines’ Pala’wan people.
- Animals
Static electricity can pull ticks on to their hosts
Ticks brought near objects with a static charge frequently get pulled to those surfaces, a new study finds, suggesting one way the bugs find hosts.
- Psychology
Boys experience depression differently than girls. Here’s why that matters
Boys’ depression often manifests as anger or irritability, but teen mental health surveys tend to ask about hopelessness.
- Physics
Neutrinos offer a new view of the Milky Way
Physicists turned to AI to help map out the newfound origins of ghostly neutrino particles coming from deep in the Milky Way.
- Science & Society
Humans exploit about one-third of wild vertebrate species
An analysis of nearly 47,000 vertebrate animal species reveals that using them for food, medicine or the pet trade is helping push some toward extinction.
- Climate
The snow forest of North America may be about to shrink
From 2000 to 2019, the boreal forest’s northern boundary didn’t move while southern tree cover thinned due to climate change, wildfires and logging.
- Astronomy
A newfound gravitational wave ‘hum’ may be from the universe’s biggest black holes
Scientists reported evidence for a new class of gravitational waves, likely created by merging supermassive black holes.
- Life
Young squash bugs seek out adults’ poop for an essential microbe
Squash bug nymphs don’t rely on their parents to pick up a bacterium they’d die without. They find it on their own.
- Astronomy
200 years ago, the Milky Way’s central black hole briefly awoke
The black hole is thought to be mostly quiet and dim. Now, glowing cosmic clouds have revealed the behemoth’s last flare.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum computers could break the internet. Here’s how to save it
Today's encryption schemes will be vulnerable to future quantum computers, but new algorithms and a quantum internet could help.
- Life
Flowers pollinated by honeybees make lower-quality seeds
Honeybees are one of the most common pollinators. But their flower-visiting habits make it harder for some plants to produce good seeds.
- Paleontology
Megalodon sharks may have become megapredators by running hot
O. megalodon sharks were warm-blooded megapredators. But colder-blooded great white sharks may have had an evolutionary edge when food sources dwindled.
