Stories by Stephanie Pappas

Does this all feel a little familiar? Called déjà vu, that sensation may be your brain correcting its own errors

The planet’s solid inner core might rotate at a different rate than the rest of the planet, and that rate might be changing

Scientists find that magnetic fields and turbulence amplify each other inside stars’ hidden layers, slowing down the stellar cores’ spin

A newly discovered interaction related to quantum entanglement between dissimilar particles opens a new window into the nuclei of atoms

Two-million-year-old DNA, the world's oldest, reveals that mastodons once roamed forests in Greenland’s far northern reaches

Heavy rains may have set off an outpouring of ash and gases from Indonesia’s volcano Semeru “like uncorking a soda bottle”

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on Earth, erupted for the first time in nearly 40 years. Its eruptions tend to be shorter-lived than those of the other Big Island volcanoes, and its lava is more liquid and flows faster

Aye-ayes use their long middle finger to pick their nose, a first for this lemur species. But scientists aren’t sure why these animals picked up the habit

Researchers have identified a rare baby mummy as the firstborn son of a count of Austria, and rickets may have led to the child’s death

A sunfish found near the Azores breaks the 26-year-old record for the heftiest bony fish ever measured

An ultradense pool of salty water at the bottom of the ocean holds a pristine record of hundreds of years of tsunamis, earthquakes and floods

A diamond contains the only known sample of a mineral from Earth’s mantle—and hints at oceans’ worth of water hidden deep within our planet

Fish fossils from Western Australia preserve the oldest 3-D hearts, livers, stomachs and intestines in a jawed vertebrate

Nanotubes may provide a cunning answer to the mystery of how the virus that causes COVID infects neurons and produces long-lasting neurological symptoms

New research suggests there are 14 percent more tree species out there than previously believed

Why some tornadoes are able to travel so far and persist so long

The surprising find has never shown up in nature before and reveals secrets about the earth’s mantle

Tiny pockets of fluid inside imperfect diamonds show how Earth changed

The “slow slip” event preceded a devastating 1861 quake of at least magnitude 8.5 in Sumatra

After a record-setting year for hurricanes and wildfires, the insurance industry is grappling with the role of our climate emergency in estimating local disaster damages

Images from the Event Horizon Telescope reveal new details of how supermassive black holes produce huge jets of matter and energy

Sound waves from fin whales can help scientists probe Earth’s crust

The reptiles scale trees with a technique never before observed in any snake

The sheer scale of buildings, infrastructure and other anthropogenic objects underscores our impact on the planet