Bacteria on a sample from the Ryugu asteroid, viewed with an electron microscopeMatthew J. Genge et al. 2024 A rock from the asteroid Ryugu that was brought back to Earth appears to be festooned with microbial life. But these microbes...
November 21, 20245 min readNew Bird Flu Cases in Young People Are Raising Concerns about Mutating VirusCanada’s first human case of bird flu has left a teenager in critical condition as human infections continue to emerge in the western U.S.By...
November 21, 20243 min readChimps Share Knowledge Like Humans Do, Spurring Innovation Female chimps who migrate to new social groups bring skills and technology with them, helping to drive development of increasingly complex tool sets By Rachel NuwerWestern chimpazee female...
Rachel Feltman: There’s been a lot of hype around artificial intelligence lately. Some companies want us to believe that machine learning is powerful enough to practically tell the future. But what about using AI to explore the past—and talk to...
I love it when a seemingly simple question—one so simple that it feels silly to even ask it—leads to profound, even cosmic, insight.For example: Why is the sky dark at night?I can imagine you reading this and thinking, “Seriously? That’s...
November 22, 20245 min readHere’s Why Abortion Largely Won on Election Day—But Not on the Top of the TicketVoters supported abortion rights measures while electing antiabortion candidates in the 2024 election. The split reflects a complicated abortion landscape post-DobbsBy Kelly...
November 22, 20243 min readWorld's Oldest Alphabet Found on an Ancient Clay Gift TagA finger-sized clay cylinder from a tomb in northern Syria appears to be the oldest example of writing using an alphabet rather than hieroglyphs or cuneiformBy Stephanie...
Mathematicians explore ideas by proposing conjectures and proving them with theorems. For centuries, they built these proofs line by careful line, and most math researchers still work like that today. But artificial intelligence is poised to fundamentally change this process....
The Kongsbreen and Kronebreen glaciers in Svalbard, Norway,Åslund/Norwegian Polar Institute/Greenpeace The mighty collision of two glaciers – Kongsbreen and Kronebreen – in Svalbard, Norway, is captured in a woven patchwork of black and white images taken by the Norwegian Polar...
Your phone isn’t listeningmiodrag ignjatovic/Getty Images Most people believe that they have received an online advert as a result of their devices covertly listening to an offline conversation, despite there being no evidence that this takes place. Joanna Strycharz at...
