All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Supreme Court ruling on ‘conversion therapy’ puts medical talk in the hot seat
In Chiles v. Salazar, the court ruled that a therapist has First Amendment protections. That could impact how talk therapy is regulated.
- Math
Huge Numbers tackles mathematics at its most incomprehensibly large
Mathematician Richard Elwes surveys googology, the study of enormous numbers, in a new book.
- Paleontology
Fossils reveal many complex animals existed before the Cambrian explosion
Hundreds of Chinese fossils from the dawn of animal evolution may change how scientists think of this critical period of prehistory.
- Animals
To climb trees, cicadas look to the shadows
Tree-climbing cicadas find their perches by looking for patches of darkness, a strategy known as skototaxis.
- Archaeology
The oldest known dice date back about 12,000 years in North America
A study of ancient artifacts suggests Native American dice games began thousands of years earlier than previously documented.
- Space
Artemis II sends humans around the moon for first time since Apollo
NASA’s Artemis II astronauts are on their way to the moon, testing the Orion spacecraft for future lunar landings and a planned moon base.
- Health & Medicine
Digital heart twins can guide a lifesaving procedure
Heart replicas helped doctors spot good targets for ablation in 10 patients. Months later, all of them are free of sustained faulty rhythms.
- Paleontology
A fossil reveals early relatives of spiders — armed with claws
A Utah fossil shows early relatives of spiders and scorpions already had distinctive front claws 500 million years ago.
- Quantum Physics
Just 10,000 quantum bits might crack internet encryption schemes
Quantum computers based on atoms could provide access to encrypted data much sooner than scientists thought.
- Science & Society
Pronatalists want more babies. Their solutions aren’t rooted in science
Conservative pronatalists want a return to the traditional nuclear family. But that family structure is at odds with how humans evolved.
- Planetary Science
A comet may have flipped its spin and entered into a death spiral
Gases jetting out of Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák may have caused it to reverse its spin in 2017, possibly leading to its eventual destruction.
- Animals
Secrets of the Bees zooms in on life in a hive
A new documentary available on Disney+ and Hulu appeals to our sense of wonder to highlight why bees need saving.
