Mother Bats’ Hearts Quicken When They Hear Baby’s Cries
Like humans, bat moms are primed by evolution to spring into action
Ice Age Europeans Were More Connected Than We Thought
A prehistoric French woman’s DNA tells the story
Was This the Exact Date of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”?
Astronomers look beyond the stars in search of Van Gogh’s inspiration
These Are the Most Stunning Weather Photos of the Year
The American Meteorological Society just announced the winners of its 2026 photo contest
Latest Stories
Forensic Facial Specialists Can Identify People Using Just a Couple Facial Features
Your furrowed brow may be betraying you
LSD May Speed Up Brain Activity and Make it Fractal
New study suggests a more complex reshuffling of experience
Read Stories from Our Newest Print Issue: The Stupid Issue
See moreThe Elegance of a Stupid Question
Are computers in mathematics rewriting the definitions of stupid and smart?
The Resistance Is Here
They didn’t plan to be activists. But scientists have united to overturn Trump’s drastic cuts to science.
The Return of a Discredited Pseudoscience
Eugenics is rearing its ugly head again in today’s crucible of politics and culture
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Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the brightest living thinkers.
Astronomy
See more Astronomy63 Years Ago This Week, Félicette Became the First Cat in Space
She’s still the only feline to have the honor
Are Our Hearts Strong Enough to Get to Mars?
Prolonged space travel can wreak havoc on the circulatory system
“It Feels Like Something Out of Science Fiction”: Astronomers Find First Green Star
The universe just got a little more colorful
History
See more HistoryThis Is the Oldest Peace Treaty Ever Discovered
Maybe there are a few things we can still learn from it
Thousands of Fancy Dishes Have Survived a 2,100-Year-Old Shipwreck
You probably wouldn’t want to eat off them though
Psychology
See more Psychology
Why Forgive and Forget is Bad Advice
A conversation with MacArthur fellow Felipe de Brigard about how forgiveness reshapes the memory of atrocity
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Environment
See more EnvironmentThe World’s Largest Penguin Colony Suffers Catastrophic Loss
Something is amiss in Antarctica
This Giant Waterlily Species Was Discovered Via Instagram
They can grow to more than 6 feet in diameter
Zoology
See more ZoologyA New Fossil Hints at the Surprising Origins of Snakes
By the Cretaceous, they’d already tried on several different lifestyles and sensory styles
How Crocodiles Survived the Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs
They knew the most important rule in real estate
Philosophy
See more PhilosophyCould AI Have Consciousness That Isn’t Human-Like?
Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith on AI consciousness and existential risk
What a Picture of a Dog Has to Do with Reason and Logic
People who can’t see images in their minds challenge an old philosophical standby
What Makes Humans Stupid
It takes intelligence to get things spectacularly wrong. An essay on our undoing.
We Now Know What Denisovans Looked Like
An analysis of their skulls paints a picture of our archaic cousins
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To See the World Through a Kaleidoscope of Butterflies
This writer was transformed by her “foolish” quest to chase butterflies in Denmark
Primates Also Become Germophobes After Living Through a Viral Outbreak
And it could shed light on the evolutionary origins of disgust
The Most Unsettling Books We Know
Scientists and artists tell us about the book that scared them to the core
Longevity Research Has a Bullshit Problem
How impossible ages, lost paperwork, and invented biographies become scientific fact
