How the way we’re taught to round numbers in school falls short
Imagine needing to estimate the total cost of the items in your grocery basket to decide whether to put something back. So you round...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
The universe’s background starlight is twice as bright as expected
Even when you remove the bright stars, the glowing dust and other nearby points of light from the inky, dark sky, a background glow...
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....
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...
Sudan conflict: Peace efforts resume to end ‘drone war’ fuelling humanitarian crisis 
UN agencies appeal for help to protect weakest from unprecedented El Niño 
Summit in Samarkand, a boon for child wellbeing and health 
Migrants paid up to $500 million in smuggling fees on European sea routes