All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Space travel may harm health by damaging cells’ powerhouses
Biochemical changes after going to space suggest that harm to cells’ energy-producing structures, called mitochondria, could explain astronauts’ health issues.
- Science & Society
How to fight online hate before it leads to violence
Counter-speech, artificial intelligence and other tools can help spot online hate — and maybe thwart it. New studies show how.
- Animals
Harsh Ice Age winters may have helped turn wolves into dogs
In the Ice Age, Arctic hunters may have turned to some game for their fatty bones. Much of those animals’ meat might have been left to domesticate dogs.
- Climate
Analyze This: 2020 ties with 2016 for hottest year on record
Last year capped the warmest decade on record. It coincided with a growing increase of warming greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
- Earth
Space station sensors saw how weird ‘blue jet’ lightning forms
A mysterious type of lightning in the upper atmosphere has been traced to a brief, bright flash of light at the top of a storm cloud.
- Animals
Newfound technique allows some tree snakes to climb wide trees
When a tree is too wide to climb, brown tree snakes use a lasso-like trick to slowly ascend up to snacks.
- Physics
Scientists Say: Piezoelectric
Piezoelectric materials produce an electric voltage when they are bent or squished. This can let us harvest electricity from movement.
- Health & Medicine
Five questions about COVID-19 vaccine trials in teens, answered
Scientists are now testing COVID-19 vaccines in teens. Why do teens need a separate trial? And what would happen? We’ve got answers.
- Physics
Physicists have clocked the shortest time span ever
The experiment revealed how long it takes light to cross a hydrogen molecule: just a couple hundred zeptoseconds.
- Environment
Unmasking the pandemic’s pollution problem
Discarding all the materials people use to protect themselves from COVID-19 has created a growing environmental problem.
- Chemistry
A new catalyst turns greenhouse gas into jet fuel
The catalyst is an improvement over its predecessors. Made of cheap materials like iron, it produces jet fuel in a single step.
- Animals
Let’s learn about taste
Taste tells us what’s good to eat, but scientists are still learning about how it works.
