Matter and Its Interactions

Climate

As winters warm, athletes must cope with harder snow and tricky ice

Ice arenas and artificial snow now dominate the winter Olympics. Athletes there — and everywhere — may need to adjust how they train and perform.

Animals

Radioactive animals don’t glow — but do show the power of radiation

Wild species exposed to nuclear contamination help show how radiation affects living things — including its risks to people.

Environment

Nuclear weapons tests many decades ago have left a radioactive legacy

Decades of aboveground nuclear weapons tests, starting in the 1950s, lightly littered the planet with toxic fallout, which appears to have sickened some people.

Materials Science

‘Stenciling’ tiny gold particles gives them new properties

Decorating nanoparticles with other chemicals could give them useful properties for medicines, textiles and more.

Physics

Chopping an onion? Sharp knives can keep its juice out of your eyes

Slow and steady cuts with a sharp blade, video shows, can reduce the pain-inducing spray of tiny onion-juice droplets.

Chemistry

New materials yank ‘forever chemicals’ from water

Materials known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, trap some PFAS fast — and can be reused again and again.

Microbes

Scientists Say: Microcin

Small and deadly (to bacteria), these protein-like molecules fight the growth of potentially dangerous germs in our gut.

Microbes

Thank microbes for chocolate’s tasty flavors

Cocoa beans matter, but yeast and bacteria may be the real secret to fine chocolate flavor.

Chemistry

Structures that work like Hermione’s magic handbag land a chemistry Nobel

Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi developed these metal-organic frameworks, which can trap pollutants, collect water from air and more.

Archaeology

Knotted strands of 500-year-old hair tell a surprising story

Used in a device called a khipu, the hair reveals the owner’s simple diet. Those data now suggest that in Incan society, even some commoners kept records.

Physics

Could we ever build the tech to shrink ourselves?

The atoms that make us up couldn’t be shrunk or smashed closer together — at least, not without catastrophic consequences.

Chemistry

Scientists Say: Element

The number of neutrons and electrons can vary in atoms of the same element. The number of protons alone sets each of these substances apart.