Yellowstone's Supervolcano Has Stranger Plumbing Than We Thought
Decades of textbook explanation, overturned by a 3D model of rock flow miles beneath the American West.
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The Same Shells, 20,000 Years Apart
Neither species needed these to survive. Both collected them anyway, in the same cave, thousands of years apart. What passed between them is still an open question.
A Poop Transplant Gave Old Mice Their Young Brains Back
Lazy eye treatment only works on brains still able to rewire themselves. So how did a gut microbiome switch that ability back on in animals long past it?
The Colony Didn't Just Feed Its Queen. It Engineered Her.
The colony didn't just feed its future queen. It built her a precision-engineered wax chamber, staffed it, and raised the temperature.
Astronomers May Have Caught a Little Red Dot Being Born
More than 300 mysterious objects have shown up in the universe's first billion years, then disappeared without explanation. One newly spotted example might still be assembling itself.
A 6-Month-Old Neanderthal Already Had the Body of a Toddler
Neanderthal bones grew on one schedule and their teeth on another. Scientists have a guess as to why.
A $20 Fish Tank Helped Grow the First Human Lung Outside a Body
A donor organ, washed of all its cells, reduced to a ghostly scaffold. Then rebuilt from scratch using the patient's own biology.
This Bird's Sexy Dance Began as a Fruit Craving
The most dazzling courtship displays in the bird world may trace back not to sexual pressure, but to a gut enzyme these birds quietly stopped using. What came first changed everything.
2.64 Billion Years in the Dark, and It Tastes Like Regret
Sealed in rock since before animals existed, it might still have something living inside it. Someone got close enough to get splashed, which is how we know it's unpleasant to the tongue.
The Same Molecule in Your Raspberry Jam Turned Up Near the Center of the Galaxy
The same sugar molecule in raspberries just turned up near the galactic center, in quantities nobody expected. What that means for life on Earth is still wide open.
Your Skin Cells Fire Electrical Spikes When You're Injured. They Work Nothing Like a Nerve.
A wound sets off a wave of activity that races across nearby tissue for over an hour, using signaling biology assumed reserved for neurons. What it's actually communicating is still unclear.
The First Look Inside a Whale Never Seen Alive
A routine beach call in New Zealand turned into the first real look inside one of the ocean's most elusive animals, and the anatomy inside was stranger than anyone expected.
The North Sea Crater That Lost the Vote
The proof sat in a cardboard box of oil-well cuttings for decades. Two grains of shocked crystal. The asteroid had always been winning the argument.
A Man Died in His Bed in Herculaneum. His Brain Turned to Glass.
Only one human being has ever been found this way. Scientists still aren't sure why him, or how it happened at all.
A Bat Sat on a Sleeping Boy's Face. He Had No Bite Marks. He Died of Rabies.
A bat lands on a sleeping kid's face. No bite. No scratch. No reason to worry. The family was wrong, and the reason why is something most people still don't know.
450 Million Years Ago, Your Brain Already Had a Blueprint
A jawless fish unchanged for 360 million years just handed researchers a working map of the very first vertebrate brain, older and stranger than expected.
Results: Best Hot Take from YGBFKM
Ten hot takes. One vote. Science journalism has never been more democratically absurd.
Two Planets We've Been Calling Ice Giants May Be Full of Magma
The two planets have been called ice giants for decades. Modeling suggests their interiors may be roiling oceans of magma instead.