Wally Broecker divined how the climate could suddenly shift
It was the mid-1980s, at a meeting in Switzerland, when Wally Broecker’s ears perked up. Scientist Hans Oeschger was describing an ice core drilled...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
Grainy ice cream is unpleasant. Plant-based nanocrystals might help
You can never have too much ice cream, but you can have too much ice in your ice cream. Adding plant-based nanocrystals to the...
Social mingling shapes how orangutans issue warning calls
Human language, in its many current forms, may owe an evolutionary debt to our distant ape ancestors who sounded off in groups of scattered...
How a virus turns caterpillars into zombies doomed to climb to their deaths
Higher and higher still, the cotton bollworm moth caterpillar climbs, its tiny body ceaselessly scaling leaf after leaf. Reaching the top of a plant,...
Lost genes may help explain how vampire bats survive on blood alone
Surviving on blood alone is no picnic. But a handful of genetic tweaks may have helped vampire bats evolve to become the only mammal...
50 years ago, scientists thought a desert shrub might help save endangered whales
Shrub may save the sperm whale – Science News, March 25, 1972 The sperm whale is an endangered species. A major reason is that...
How I’ll decide when it’s time to ditch my mask
For weeks, I have been watching coronavirus cases drop across the United States. At the same time, cases were heading skyward in many places...
Here’s how boa constrictors squeeze their dinner without suffocating themselves
The boa constrictor’s choke hold is an iconic animal attack. By coiling around its prey, a snake can squeeze the life out of a...
Forests help reduce global warming in more ways than one
When it comes to cooling the planet, forests have more than one trick up their trees. Tropical forests help cool the average global...
Some past Science News coverage was racist and sexist. We’re deeply sorry
Content warning: This essay about aspects of Science News’ coverage cites specific examples of racism, sexism and prejudice against members of the LGBTQ community...
A new treatment could restore some mobility in people paralyzed by strokes 
What has Perseverance found in two years on Mars? 
This robot automatically tucks its limbs to squeeze through spaces 
Greta Thunberg’s new book urges the world to take climate action now