All Stories
- Tech
Scientists Say: Agrivoltaics
This win-win technology means future farmers may produce both food and electricity.
- Animals
Narwhals may use their enormous lance-like tusks to play
Video shows narwhals using their tusks to prod — even flip — fish they don’t target as prey. It’s the first reported evidence of these whales playing.
- Environment
New water treatment process removes pollutants most now don’t
The two-step water treatment process could cut not only excreted drugs flowing into waterways but also some nutrients that feed harmful algal blooms.
- Earth
Can engineering save Antarctica’s most vulnerable glacier?
Bold engineering projects might stabilize Thwaites Glacier and slow sea level rise. But no one knows if they will work — or have serious side effects.
- Animals
Mosquitoes taste you before they decide to bite
Mosquitoes seem to prefer some flavors over others. Knowing what they like — and hate — could lead to better ways to prevent bites.
- Tech
Experiment: Make the fastest rubber band paddleboat
With a rubber band and some cardboard, you can build your own paddleboat to speed across the surface of a pool.
- Earth
Earth farts may explain some spooky floating lights
The gases released by earthquakes might occasionally ignite, triggering ghostly lights sometimes witnessed in South Carolina.
- Brain
Scientists Say: Neuroplasticity
Neurons in the brain forge new connections and sometimes trim back old ones. This capacity for change allows us to learn new skills and recover from injury.
- Plants
Could trees ever get up and walk away?
In fantasy, trees can walk, climb and even fight. Real trees move, too. It just happens in extreme slow mo.
- Earth
Analyze This: Smartphone data may help improve GPS
Data from millions of phones helped fill in maps of the ionosphere, an atmospheric layer that can muddle radio signals key for navigation systems.
- Animals
Dinosaurs are still alive. Today, we call them birds
Birds don’t look like the scaly giants of Jurassic World. But fossils are revealing how these modern-day dinosaurs descended from ancient reptiles.
- Animals
What is a dinosaur?
Scientists have named more than 1,000 species of nonavian dinosaurs. Their legacy lives on in the 11,000-plus bird species alive today.
