Stories by Meghan Bartels

Minuscule amounts of uranium detected in the shells of turtles point to a new way to track such materials’ impacts on people and ecosystems

In the latest chapter of an ongoing “moon rush,” Russia’s Luna-25 mission will attempt the nation’s first lunar landing in nearly 50 years

At Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits, scientists found they could watch large mammals disappear from the fossil record—and could trace the ecosystem through the catastrophe

Smoke from wildfires that have been exacerbated by climate change is complicating the picture of air pollution in the U.S.

Researchers set out to calculate how much of Earth’s life dwells in the planet’s least admired environment

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says a paleontologist not involved in the discovery of a 40-million-year-old fossilized whale

A glitch may have silenced NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft until mid-October—but a “heartbeat” signal offers hope for reestablishing contact earlier

Malaria grabs headlines, but U.S. residents are more likely to encounter West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne illnesses

An international team of scientists says nematodes found in Siberian permafrost are 46,000 years old and survived using techniques similar to those of a modern lab favorite

Revisiting the precious lunar samples on Earth suggests that some areas of the moon’s surface might be older than scientists once thought

Before leading the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer co-authored a paper explaining that the most massive stars must eventually become what we would now call a black hole

A trio of solar flares from a departing sunspot include one major flare that lasted several hours

Researchers across Europe have found bizarre nests bristling with the sharp metal stakes cities use to repel birds

Just seeing nature in VR brings some health benefits—and helps scientists learn why we need the real thing

“If, by some chance, there’s another being out there that might connect to it, I wanted them to know that regardless of how it may seem sometimes, we love this Earth,” says poet Ada Limón about her poem

When sleep feels elusive, getting out of bed can calm your mind and help you avoid bad sleep habits

Scientists are beginning to understand what kind of thunderstorm produces so-called megaflashes of lightning that stretch more than 60 miles

President Joe Biden has been using a CPAP machine to treat his sleep apnea, according to White House officials. What does that mean?

Astrophysicists are tuning in to a never-before-seen type of gravitational wave spawned by pairs of supermassive black holes

Professional and amateur astronomers alike are hoping that Comet C/2023 A3 will sparkle in Earth’s skies in the fall of 2024, although comets are notoriously difficult to predict

Astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh has spent decades peering into the center of the Milky Way galaxy, discovering hundreds of enigmatic filaments in the process

The tourist submersible Titan imploded while diving to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in 1912

Scientists have used quantum technology to track individual particles of light as they begin the process of photosynthesis

To better understand early pregnancy loss without using actual human embryos, scientists employed stem cells to create models that mimic this stage of development