All Stories
- Astronomy
To find ET, look at who’s (maybe) looking at us
To listen for aliens, two astronomers suggest that we focus on stars whose inhabitants can see Earth periodically cross in front of our sun.
- Animals
Cave-dwelling salamander comes pigmented and pale
Something’s funny in the family tree of pale, slinky cave salamanders.
- Anthropology
Belize cave was Maya child sacrifice site
Bones in Central American cave suggest many Maya sacrificial victims were children.
- Humans
Pieces of Homo naledi story continue to puzzle
Researchers defend Homo naledi as a new hominid species and debate how it reached an underground cave.
- Cosmology
New sky map charts previously unknown gamma-ray sources
A new map of the sky from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory charts the cosmic origins of high-energy photons.
- Planetary Science
How alien can a planet be and still support life?
Geoscientists imagine the unearthly mechanisms that could keep alien planets habitable.
- Astronomy
New telescopes will search for signs of life on distant planets
Researchers are coming up with creative ways to pick up biosignatures in far-away planetary atmospheres.
- Quantum Physics
Information is physical, even in quantum systems, study suggests
A thermodynamic principle says that deleting information generates heat, and now, scientists say that goes for quantum systems, too.
- Health & Medicine
Clusters of cancer cells get around by moving single file
Clusters of cancer cells squeeze through thin blood vessels by aligning single file.
- Space
Will we know extraterrestrial life when we see it?
Desert varnish and certain minerals hint that life — here and elsewhere — may defy current criteria.
- Animals
Scientists find a crab party deep in the ocean
A trip to check out the biodiversity off the coast of Panama revealed thousands of crabs swarming on the seafloor.
- Climate
Wildfire shifts could dump more ice-melting soot in Arctic
Wildfires will emit more soot into the air in many regions by the end of the century, new simulations show.
