All Stories
- Physics
Explainer: How the Doppler effect shapes waves in motion
The Doppler effect describes how waves are compressed or stretched when their source — or receiver — is moving.
- Life
Your face is mighty mite-y. And that’s a good thing
Tiny face mites live in our pores, getting food and shelter in return for eating our skin waste. A new study shows they can’t live without us.
- Fossils
Warm feathers may have helped dinos survive mass Triassic die-off
Dinosaurs may have weathered freezing conditions about 202 million years ago, thanks to warm feathery coats.
- Climate
Let’s learn about heat waves
Heat waves often occur when a high-pressure system lingers over a certain area. These deadly events are on the rise due to climate change.
- Psychology
Scientists Say: Trauma
No one experiences trauma the same way. Its effects can be physical or emotional. Immediate or delayed. Brief or long-lasting.
- Earth
Earth’s rock collection hints at how to search for life elsewhere
A new way to sort minerals focuses on how they formed. It provides new clues about Earth’s crystal past and how to find life on other planets.
- Animals
The top side of an elephant’s trunk is surprisingly stretchy
Research on elephant trunks could inspire new artificial skins for soft robots.
- Fossils
This big dino had tiny arms before T. rex made them cool
A predecessor to Tyrannosaurus rex, Meraxes gigas had a giant head. But the muscularity of its puny arms suggests those limbs served some purpose.
- Plants
This pitcher plant lures insects into underground deathtraps
Scientists didn’t expect the carnivorous, eggplant-shaped pitchers to be sturdy enough to grow embedded in the soil.
- Health & Medicine
Six months in space causes 10 years’ worth of bone loss
Even a year after recovery back on Earth, astronauts who’d been in space six months or more still had bone loss equal to a decade of aging.
- Animals
Gophers might be farmers, a controversial study suggests
Pocket gophers air out and fertilize the soil in a way that amounts to simple farming, two researchers claim. But not everyone agrees.
- Chemistry
Scientists Say: Pigment
From fruits to fur to fine art, many materials get their colors from compounds called pigments.
