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In the Midst of Tornado Season, a Surprisingly Short History of Predicting Twisters

A United States Army Lieutenant was the first to forecast the deadly storms in the late 1800s. Then he was told to stop.

Can “Dante’s Inferno” Tell Us Something About Space Rocks?

A conversation with an expert in geomythology about a wild idea

How to Dodge a Mountain Lion

A new look at puma-human encounters in the mountains of California

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Science Is Political—and Spiritual

Author and physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on the crisis in American science

The Model for Botticelli’s Venus Died at 23

And researchers have a new theory for her untimely demise

Read Stories from Our Newest Print Issue: Precarious

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The Cephalopods Are Coming

Fossil records reveal Earth’s mass extinctions are followed by a rise of ocean cephalopods. They’re rising again.

Schrödinger’s Kittens Are All Grown Up

Offspring of the most famous thought experiment in physics are now testing the very fabric of the universe

The Most Precarious Day in the Universe

On the same day the world descended into war, physicists saw reality itself unraveling

How to Stop a Killer Asteroid

From high-speed battering rams to gravity tractors, the technology exists to protect the planet. The question is whether humanity will act in time—and in concert.

Who Was Nancy Grace Roman?

The trailblazing astronomer lends her name to the newest space telescope slated to deliver unprecedented insight into the universe

This Cosmonaut Was the First Woman in Space

The Soviet Union beat the United States to the punch by 20 years

The Ancient Roots of Modern Winemaking

Two-thousand-year-old grape seeds yield viticultural insight in the Chianti wine region

274 Years Ago Today, Benjamin Franklin Flew a Kite

But a Frenchman beat him to the electric punch by a month

Bad Third-Grade Behavior Could be a Preview of Educational Failure

Kids who can hold it together until the final bell may be primed for more academic success in life

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This Shark Can Walk on Land

A new shark species just dropped

Saving a Tiny Endangered Porpoise One Pixel at a Time

Only a handful of vaquitas exist in the wild, but now one is preserved in unprecedented digital detail

Goblin Sharks Caught on Camera in Their Natural Habitat for the First Time

Two of these mysterious sharks were recorded by deep-sea submersibles

Aliens Probably Have Consciousness 

A conversation with a philosopher about extraterrestrial and machine minds

How to Feel at Home in the Modern World

A conversation with Harvard philosopher Ian Marcus Corbin on material, biological, and spiritual belonging

The Bad Seed and the Problem of Blame

A conversation with behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden about the heritability of vice

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Is This the King of GLP-1s?

A new meta-analysis stacks three leading GLP-1 medications against each other

What Is a Trillion, Really?

The sum is hard to comprehend

These Ancient Millipedes Paved the Way for Terrestrial Life

They preceded vertebrates on land by about 80 million years

What Makes Sloths So Slow?

The two-toed sloth genome provides some definitive answers

Why Robots Still Can’t Do Science

AI can read the literature in an afternoon and design molecules a chemist never would. So why can't a robot hold a pipette?

Turning the Psychedelic Experience into a Math Problem

Extended DMT trips could help scientists probe a new theory of reality that puts consciousness first