Fossils
Explainer: How a fossil forms
Minerals can replace any bone, shell or once-living tissue and also fill in the spaces between these hard parts, birthing a fossil.
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
New fossils bring the wide world of pterosaurs to life
The latest clues from fossils hint at where these flying reptiles came from, how they evolved, what they ate and more.
Explainer
Technically Fiction
Tech
How to prevent the robot replication apocalypse
Today’s bot-building robots aren’t set on world domination. But scientists and philosophers want to keep future tech in check.
Profile
Environment
This ecologist is looking at the Amazon’s past to save its future
Carolina Levis researches how local communities influence the Amazon. She’s interested in how Indigenous knowledge can help protect the rainforest.
Features
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New fossils bring the wide world of pterosaurs to life
The latest clues from fossils hint at where these flying reptiles came from, how they evolved, what they ate and more.
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The Amazon is in trouble. Here’s why — and why it matters
Challenges from human-caused climate change, deforestation and degradation leave the fate of this vast forest uncertain.
More Stories from the November 1, 2023 issue
- Space
Spacecraft traveling through a wormhole could send messages home
A probe going through a wormhole should be able to send messages home before such a tunnel forever closes, a new computer model finds.
- Math
Math explains why dense crowds form surprisingly orderly lines
New research into the behavior of moving groups of people adds to decades of study on the wisdom of crowds.
- Microbes
Bacteria give some cheeses their distinct flavors
Linking types of bacteria to specific flavors could help cheesemakers tweak their products — or even develop new cheese flavor.
- Animals
A new technique creates glowing whole-body maps of mice
Removing cholesterol from mouse bodies lets fluorescent proteins seep into every tissue. That has helped researchers map entire body parts.
- Chemistry
Experiment: Kimchi chemistry
In this cooking and food science project, we make kimchi from scratch and investigate changes in pH and glucose as it ferments.
- Space
Ghost particles paint a new picture of the Milky Way
Scientists tracked neutrinos from space to create a new map of our galaxy. It’s the first image of the Milky Way to be made without light.
