All Stories
- Physics
Let’s learn about ‘ghost particles’
Ghostly particles called neutrinos are so lightweight that for a long time, they were thought to have no mass at all.
- Animals
Watch: This red fox is the first spotted fishing for its food
Big fish in shallow water were easy pickings for this red fox. It’s the first of its species known to fish.
By Freda Kreier -
- Tech
NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into an asteroid — on purpose
This mission could provide a blueprint for how to deflect a killer asteroid, if one is ever found headed for Earth.
- Animals
Living mysteries: This critter has 38 times more DNA than you do
The genomes of salamanders are bloated with genetic “parasites.” That extra DNA slows down their lives and strands them in perpetual childhood.
By Douglas Fox - Animals
Several mammals use a South American tree as their pharmacy
Researchers in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest stumbled onto something very strange. They watched as animals “doctored” themselves with products from a tree.
- Fossils
Bizarre ancient critter has spines but no anus
The spiny discovery moves this minion lookalike off a distant limb on the human family tree.
By Anna Gibbs - Space
Scientists Say: Telescope
Almost everything we know about the universe around us, we know thanks to telescopes.
- Earth
Not one, but two asteroids might have ended the age of dinosaurs
A craterlike structure found off the coast of West Africa might have been formed by an asteroid that struck around the time dinosaurs went extinct.
By Nikk Ogasa - Tech
No trees were harmed to 3-D print this piece of wood
How clever! Scientists used print-speed adjustments to control how flat, 3-D printed shapes morph into complex wooden objects.
- Animals
Some ecologists value parasites — and now want a plan to save them
Parasites get a bad rap as disease-causing, unwelcome guests on other organisms. But parasites are also imperiled, and scientists don’t want to lose them.
- Animals
Analyze This: Bulky plesiosaurs may not have been bad swimmers after all
Long-necked plesiosaurs were thought to be slow swimmers. But new research suggests the animals’ large size helped them overcome water resistance.