How climbers help scientists vibe with Utah’s famous red rock formations
As Kathryn Vollinger prepared to climb Castleton Tower, a 120-meter-tall sandstone formation in the desert near Moab, Utah, the outdoor guide assessed her gear....
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
Diamonds may stud Mercury’s crust
A treasure trove of diamonds may be sown into Mercury’s cratered crust. Billions of years of meteorite impacts may have flash-baked much of Mercury’s...
What do we mean by ‘COVID-19 changes your brain’?
Like all writers, I spend large chunks of my time looking for words. When it comes to the ultracomplicated and mysterious brain, I need...
What made the last century’s great innovations possible?
In the early decades of the 20th century, a slew of technologies began altering daily life with seemingly unprecedented speed and breadth. Suddenly, consumers...
Smoke from Australia’s intense fires in 2019 and 2020 damaged the ozone layer
Towers of smoke that rose high into the stratosphere during Australia’s “black summer” fires in 2019 and 2020 destroyed some of Earth’s protective ozone...
How light from black holes is narrowing the search for axions
The search for a hypothetical subatomic particle that could signal new physics just narrowed a bit — thanks to the light swirling around a...
How a scientist-artist transformed our view of the brain
The Brain in Search of ItselfBenjamin EhrlichFarrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 Spanish anatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal is known as the father of modern...
Even the sea has light pollution. These new maps show its extent
The first global atlas of ocean light pollution shows that large swaths of the sea are squinting in the glare of humans’ artificial lights...
Ancient seafarers built the Mediterranean’s largest known sacred pool
On a tiny island off Sicily’s west coast, a huge pool long ago displayed the star-studded reflections of the gods. Scientists have long thought...
A gene therapy for hemophilia boosts levels of a crucial clotting protein
A gene-based therapy is potentially a step closer to becoming a one-time treatment for men with hemophilia. The life-threatening genetic disorder hinders the body’s...
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