Journey to the Thawing Edge of Climate Change
What is a permafrost thaw slump? Just imagine a massive hole with an area the size of more than nine football fields—and growing—where ice-cold ground once stood.

Journey to the Thawing Edge of Climate Change
What is a permafrost thaw slump? Just imagine a massive hole with an area the size of more than nine football fields—and growing—where ice-cold ground once stood.
A Popular Decongestant Doesn’t Work. What Does?
The popular decongestant phenylephrine is not effective, an FDA panel found. Here’s what to use instead.
The State of Large Language Models
We present the latest updates on ChatGPT, Bard and other competitors in the artificial intelligence arms race.
Song of the Stars, Part 3: The Universe in all Senses
An astronomy festival in Italy opted to make all of its events and workshops multisensory. The organizers wanted to see whether sound, touch and smell can, like sight, transmit the wonders of the cosmos.
Song of the Stars, Part 2: Seeing in the Dark
A blind astronomer “sonified” the universe’s most explosive events: gamma-ray bursts. By listening to, rather than looking at, the data, she made a critical discovery and changed the field of astronomy.
Song of the Stars, Part 1: Transforming Space into Symphonies
Space is famously silent, but astronomers and musicians are increasingly turning astronomical data into sound as a way to make discoveries and inspire people who are blind or visually impaired.
This Researcher Captured Air from the Amazon in Dive-Bombs—And Found Grim Clues That the Forest Is Dying
One researcher has been hiring planes to strafe the sky over the Amazon rain forest to collect the air coming off the trees, and what she is finding is cause for alarm.
Should You Get a Blood Test For Alzheimer’s?
Consumers can now get easy tests for Alzheimer’s. But these tests may not really help patients that much—yet.
Ada Limón’s Poem for Europa, Jupiter’s Smallest Galilean Moon
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses her involvement in NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and the inspiration behind her poem, which will travel onboard the spacecraft.
How the Woolly Bear Caterpillar Does Something Pretty Amazing to Survive the Winter
Caterpillars can’t regulate their body temperatures, so they have to come up with a totally different strategy to make it through the coldest months of the year.
Bees ‘Buzz’ in More Ways Than You Might Think
A honeybee swarm has as much electric charge as a thundercloud, and the insects’ mass movements in the atmosphere might even have some influence on the weather.
Scientists Are Beginning to Learn the Language of Bats and Bees Using AI
The new field of digital bioacoustics is using machine learning to try decipher animal speak, including honeybee toots and quacks and whoops.