Stories by Stephanie Pappas

At a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., referred to ibogaine as the most promising treatment for PTSD and depression “that anybody’s ever seen.” Does the science hold that up?

President Trump keeps promising to secure Iran’s nuclear “dust,” which is actually a gas

Researchers have developed a way to flip time to move backward in a quantum system. This level of control could lead to bizarre real-world applications

Strikes to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant could release long-lasting radioactive cesium 137 into the Persian Gulf, causing environmental calamity and threatening drinking-water supplies for millions

A metagenomic study of this cloth, controversially purported to bear the imprint of the body of Jesus Christ, has little to say about the relic’s origins

Why the destruction of Qatar’s liquid natural gas “trains” by Iranian attacks will have global consequences

A continental collision trapped oil within what is today Iran. The same collision explains why that oil is trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz now

School is out as heavy, wet snow blankets parts of the Northeast. Though it will be a pain to shovel, it makes for perfect snowballs and the most structurally sound snowmen

An experiment to quantify the amount of the universe’s lightest element in Earth’s core suggests that the planet’s water has mostly been here since the beginning

Bad Bunny performed part of the Super Bowl halftime show from a power-line-themed set, drawing attention to the problem of widespread blackouts in Puerto Rico

Greenland’s mineral resources hold massive economic potential, but accessing them isn’t easy

Fossils of a human ancestor from 773,000 years ago may be near the base of the Homo sapiens lineage, representing a common ancestor of modern humans, Neandertals and Denisovans

New medications are in the pipeline that could help people win their battles against addictive substances, including opioids

Bones of now extinct species became a haven for bee babies thousands of years ago, scientists report in a first-of-its-kind discovery

A rapidly intensifying low-pressure system off the coast is keeping the worst of the snow away from Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C.

The Hayli Gubbi volcano, long thought to be dormant, sent ash nine miles into the sky in an eruption on Sunday

Humans and their ancestors have likely been kissing for a very long time

A meeting of the Pan American Health Organization this week will address the resurgence of measles in the Americas

Theorists have found that a “warm” version of cosmic inflation is consistent with known physics, linking it to the hunt for dark matter

A blizzard that trapped hundreds of trekkers on Mount Everest was truly “off the charts,” experts explain

Up to 98 percent of the energy of an earthquake goes into flash heating rocks, not shaking the ground, new research shows. The finding could help yield better earthquake forecasts

Seemingly contradictory materials are trapped together in two glittering diamonds from South Africa, shedding light on how diamonds form

A type of bacteria found in clean rooms has an unexpected method of survival, with implications for planetary protection

One-off cases of malaria in the U.S. may become more common as warming temperatures lead to booming mosquito populations