How Migrating Birds Use Quantum Effects to Navigate
New research hints at the biophysical underpinnings of their ability to use Earth’s magnetic field lines to find their way to their breeding and wintering grounds
Features
Viking Textiles Show Women Had Tremendous Power
Cloth from Viking and medieval archaeological sites shows that women literally made the money in the North Atlantic
How the Brain 'Constructs' the Outside World
Neural activity probes your physical surroundings to select just the information needed to survive and flourish
Astronomers Gear Up to Grapple with the High-Tension Cosmos
A debate over conflicting measurements of key cosmological properties is set to shape the next decade of astronomy and astrophysics
The Neuroscience of Reality
Reality is constructed by the brain, and no two brains are exactly alike
Naturalist Trevor Goward Helps to Overturn a 150-Year-Old Truth of Science
How a naturalist’s observations in the wilds of British Columbia inspired a scientist to discover hidden symbioses—overturning 150 years of accepted scientific wisdom
Fossil Pigments Reveal the True Colors of Dinosaurs
Long thought impossible, preservation of fossil pigments is allowing scientists to reconstruct extinct organisms with unprecedented accuracy—a feat that is yielding surprising insights into the lives they led...
New Human Metabolism Research Upends Conventional Wisdom about How We Burn Calories
Metabolism studies reveal surprising insights into how we burn calories—and how cooperative food production helped Homo sapiens flourish
COVID Long Haulers Are Calling Attention to Chronic Illnesses
But society is not prepared for the growing crisis of long COVID
The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It
Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality
JWST's First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology
The James Webb Space Telescope’s first images of the distant universe shocked astronomers. Is the discovery of unimaginably distant galaxies a mirage or a revolution?
How Parents' Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children
Adverse experiences can change future generations through epigenetic pathways
How the Inside of a Black Hole Is Secretly on the Outside
Mysterious “islands” help to explain what happens to information that falls into a black hole
An Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculation Machine Reveals New Secrets
Scientists have a new understanding of the mysterious Antikythera mechanism that challenges assumptions about ancient technology
Messenger RNA Therapies Are Finally Fulfilling Their Promise
Instructing our cells to make specific proteins could control influenza, autoimmune diseases, even cancer
Our Solar System Was Born through High-Energy Crashes, Not Stately Growth
Our neighborhood of planets was not created slowly, as scientists once thought, but in a speedy blur of high-energy crashes, destruction and rebuilding
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Some of the Best Science Can Slumber for Years
