Technology

Under a midnight moon, Luigi Garlaschelli peered out over graves. He was scouting for glowing balls of light known as will-o’-the-wisps. Like a ghostbuster, Garlaschelli, a chemist formerly at the University of Pavia in Italy,…

Under a midnight moon, Luigi Garlaschelli peered out over graves. He was scouting for glowing balls of light known as will-o’-the-wisps. Like a ghostbuster, Garlaschelli, a chemist formerly at the University of Pavia in Italy,…

Cancer cells transfer mitochondria through nanotubes to healthy neighboring cells, turning them into tumor-supporting accomplices, a new study shows.

More U.S. adults than ever report having serious trouble concentrating, remembering or making decisions. In 2023, more than 7 percent of adults without depression self-reported this type of cognitive disability. That figure is…

Latest news about the Yellowstone Supervolcano appears to be straight out of a high-action sci-fi movie, and what makes it even scarier is the fact that it could occur within decades. Imgine a supervolcano erupting, that completely covers…

McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of…

Pasteurization completely inactivates the H5N1 bird flu virus in milk — even if viral proteins linger. Drinking properly pasteurized milk contaminated with avian influenza remnants won’t increase vulnerability to the infection,…

Even hearing the phrase “Huntington’s disease” will make a room suddenly somber. So the joy that accompanied a recent announcement of results of an experimental gene therapy for the deadly diseases signaled an unfamiliar sense of…

There was something strange about the turquoise-colored songbird flying around San Antonio in 2023. With its black-and-white tail bands and its jeering honk, it somewhat resembled and sounded like a blue jay. But it had the face…

Prey animals can use their colors to hide from predators or dissuade them from attacking. But local conditions determine which option works best. A global study comparing defensive coloration in insects reveals that camouflage…

A roughly 1-million-year-old Chinese hominid skull has long vexed efforts to nail down its evolutionary identity. Fossil comparisons using a new digital reconstruction of this specimen, dubbed the Yunxian 2 skull, indicate that…

Chenyang (Leo) Lin grew up in a coastal city in southern China, far from any woods. So, when he went on a hike in New Hampshire last year, he was awed by the large trees and darting squirrels. “That was very new to me,” says Lin,…

In the dog days of summer, popping a tray of water into the freezer to make ice cubes may seem mundane. But at the smallest scales, we still don’t know a lot about how freezing unfolds. Now, the first ever molecular-scale movies…

More than 2 billion kilometers farther from the sun than Pluto, a frigid world named Makemake sports the most distant gas ever seen in our solar system, new observations reveal. “By surprise, we found evidence of gas” on…

An intense swarm of earthquakes around Greece’s Santorini Island in January has revealed a fiery underground link between two neighboring and historically explosive volcanoes. Analyses of seismic activity from June 2024 through…

Some microbes can be quite clingy. Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterial species responsible for staph infections, latches onto human skin with one of the strongest biological bonds ever recorded, researchers report in the Sept. 5…

The magnetic field swirling around an enormous black hole, located about 55 million light-years from Earth, has unexpectedly switched directions. This dramatic reversal challenges theories of black hole physics and provides…

Just six months ago, the Trump administration promised to find the cause of autism. On September 22, top U.S. health officials announced both a cause and a treatment — though neither is on solid scientific footing, and no data…

An experimental computer chip called Ice River can reuse the energy put into it, researchers say. A regular computer chip cannot reuse energy. All the electrical energy it draws to perform computations immediately becomes…

Spotted ratfish, or “ghost sharks,” have forehead teeth that help them grasp onto mates. It’s the first time teeth have been found outside of a mouth.

Once in the brain, lung cancer cells can plug themselves into the electrical circuitry there and grow, a study of mice shows. The results, published September 10 in Nature, highlight the deep and mysterious connections between…

Building blocks of life have been found on this moon of Saturn. They may come from chemical reactions beyond Enceladus’ possible life-supporting ocean.

Washington DC: Engineers discovered how to make atomic nuclei "talk" inside silicon chips, opening the door to scalable quantum computers. Researchers at the University of South Wales (UNSW) have found a way to make atomic nuclei…

New insights into an ancient swimming reptile are more than skin deep. An analysis of a 240-million-year-old fossil, published August 29 in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology, offers clues to how a reptile similar to those that…

Comet 3I/ATLAS - The Speed Demon of Space: Comet 3I/ATLAS has captured the imagination of astronomers and space enthusiasts worldwide. Discovered on July 1, 2025, by NASA’s ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System), this…

Editor in Chief Nancy Shute discusses the troubling rise of cancer among younger adults, and shares a glimmer of hope for those diagnosed in early childhood.

The Big Bang may have spawned these theoretical black holes, whose lives are thought to end in a burst of extremely energetic particles.

Months on a high-fat keto diet put mice at risk for cardiovascular disease and impaired insulin secretion.

Sometimes even bats need a sick day. Bats are renowned for the ability to be infected with viruses that can be deadly to people without showing signs of the diseases themselves. Ebola virus, Nipah virus and coronaviruses,…

Once upon a time, four queens known as the queens of blue, red, green and pink were locked in a bitter feud. The monarchs lived on four islands, all the same size, yet each with its own distinctive wildlife and vegetation.…