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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

This Cosmonaut Was the First Woman in Space

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

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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

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

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

Lessons in Chemistry, 19th-Century Style

She wrote the bestseller that made young people fall in love with science

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

Solving Feynman’s Formula for Eating Well, Parking Your Car, and Finding a Mate

The 50-year mystery suggests humans may be more rational than we thought

Food Noise Goes Quiet with GLP-1s

But there’s a lot we still don’t know about these intrusive thoughts of food

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

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

What Makes Sloths So Slow?

The two-toed sloth genome provides some definitive answers

Inside the Largest Whale Graveyard on Earth

Whale remains have accumulated in this Indian Ocean site for 5 million years

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

A Light in the Dark: Finding the Good in the Natural World

Is it absurd to think that science can inform our values?

These Ancient Millipedes Paved the Way for Terrestrial Life

They preceded vertebrates on land by about 80 million years

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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

The Venus Flytrap Mystery That Vexed Darwin, Solved

The carnivorous plant’s speedy reaction time sets it apart from other plants

Looking for Signs of Intelligence in Chatbots

A new test for AI suggests some newer LLMs are less smart than older models

The Healing Power of Dreaming Under Anesthesia

This new five-step protocol could make surgery a lot less painful

Hawaii’s False Killer Whales Are Wasting Away

Nutritional stress depresses an already threatened population