Art+Science
Biology + Beyond
Cosmos
Culture
Earth
Life
Mind
Ocean
One Question
Quanta Abstractions
Rewilding
Science at the Ballot Box
Science Philanthropy Alliance
Spark of Science
The Animal Issue
The Climates Issue
The Kinship Issue
The Porthole
The Reality Issue
The Rebel Issue
Women in Science & Engineering
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Daydream Your Way to Life-Changing Insights
Certain kinds of mind wandering can lead to powerful epiphanies
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New Life for Rotting Seaweed
Problematic piles of Sargassum could serve as useful raw material for a variety of products
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Ghostly Swamp Lightning Explained
The tiny sparks behind spooky myths might have also started life on Earth
The Porthole
Short sharp looks at science
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Deep Sleep Is This Mammal’s Super Power
How a threatened Australian marsupial is thriving in the face of drought
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The Extreme Animals in Our Backyards
Alex Riley’s three greatest revelations while writing Super Natural
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A Pediatrician’s Lament
How the blustery rhetoric of Trump and Kennedy makes life harder for local physicians
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How AI Is Helping Archaeologists Make Discoveries
New clues about ancient civilizations are being unearthed from the data
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Gaia’s Got a Fever
An aging Earth, like an aging body, is increasingly vulnerable to heat’s fatal strikes
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Can Humanity Stem the Plastic Tide?
Plastic pollution is costing the world $1.5 trillion a year in health-related losses
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Modeling the Deep
An ambitious mission seeks to map the flow of crucial chemicals through marine food webs in far-flung oceanic gyres
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The Deep Ocean Is a Global Public Good
This visionary new initiative would do more than save the ocean. It would regenerate it.
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Seeking Signs of Life on Venus
The first private mission to the morning star will sample for traces of biological activity in the planet’s clouds
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Creating a Cosmic Movie
Making sense of a new era of time-domain astronomy from the Rubin Observatory
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What’s Wrong with Having an AI Friend?
Psychologist Paul Bloom on why chatbots make good companions. And why they don’t.
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AI Already Knows Us Too Well
Chatbots profile our personalities, which could give them the keys to drive our thoughts—and actions
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What We Misunderstand About Robots
Sci-fi master Adrian Tchaikovsky on evolution, other minds, and the politics of science
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In the Land of the Eyeless Dragons
The cave-dwelling olm is a canary in the coal mine for environmental change
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Visit the 7 Most Extreme Planets in the Universe
From molten glass rain to oceans of lava, an intergalactic tour of the most terrifying and beautiful climates out there
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The Sean Carrolls Explain the Universe
Why are we here? Is there life on other planets? The renowned scientists who share a name share their answers to life’s big questions.
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The Soviet Rebel of Music
He composed on a computer in a dangerous time. His echo is still heard today.
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How Whales Could Help Us Speak to Aliens
Learning to decode complex communication on Earth may give us a leg up if intelligent life from space makes contact.
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Earth’s Largest Mirror Shattered by Science
The Bolivian salt flat long touted as a massive looking glass loses some of its shine -
Butterfly Wings Inspire Barrier-Breaking Nanotech
Mimicking the charismatic insect’s trick for flashing iridescent blue allows devices to grow ever smaller -
A Nano-sized Art Gallery
Vote on your favorite miniature art pieces and discover their link to futuristic research -
The Silent Language of Birds
These songbirds swap chirps for blinks when nature drowns them out -
Extraterrestrials are People, Too
Should we grant legal rights to extraterrestrial lifeforms before we find them? -
Is Life a Form of Computation?
Alan Turing and John von Neumann saw it early: the logic of life and the logic of code may be one and the same. -
New Eyes on Space Weather
From threats of solar storms to cosmic radiation, new efforts to warn Earthlings are launching -
Hunting the Most Elusive Whale
A new roadmap for identifying the ocean’s singing ghosts -
The Heart of a Haunting Galaxy
This “Phantom Galaxy” is riddled with holes that may be the handiwork of violent stars -
Is Fake Sugar Bad for Brains?
Sweet additives like saccharin and aspartame might fast-track cognitive decline -
The Queer Lives of Frogs
What frogs teach us about sex, science, and the unexpected messiness of biology -
The Lion Versus the Cobra
These snakes are among the few animals that can kill the regal felines -
Chimps Hit the Sauce on the Daily
They seem to prefer fruits with the highest alcohol content -
Some Dogs Can Learn New Linguistic Tricks
These word games spell out canines’ surprising cognitive powers -
What to Know About Mirror Life
Some scientists want to create a biological Bizarro World—is it safe? -
Are Some People Addicted to Revenge?
A new book explores what drives the brain’s sometimes insatiable quest for vengeance -
Has Culture Overtaken Genes in Human Evolution?
How we adapt is shifting -
What Makes an Opera Star Stand Out?
A singular quality unifies favorites -
How Rodents Spread Across the Earth
One little appendage may have played a very large part -
These Aren’t Your Pharoah’s Mummies
Other cultures across Asia were preserving their dead for millennia before the Egyptians
