It’s the last flight of the day and the plane is pretty empty. So you’re thinking, maaaybe you’ll just move up a few rows, where there’s a nice window seat with a view
Welcome to the official beginning of astronomical winter, which is marked by the winter solstice. In 2024, the winter solstice for the northern hemisphere starts on December 21 around 4:20 am EST. While
NASA has again postponed the return to Earth of Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station after Boeing’s Starliner capsule malfunctioned in the middle of this year.
The United States has now seen dozens of human bird flu cases this year, all of them mild—until now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Wednesday that a patient in Louisiana
Editors of the environmental chemistry journal Chemosphere have posted an eye-catching correction to a study reporting toxic flame retardants from electronics wind up in some household products made of black plastic, including kitchen
In 2025, AI and climate change, two of the biggest societal disruptors we’re facing, will collide. The summer of 2024 broke the record for Earth’s hottest day since data collection began, sparking widespread
An Alabama woman has become the third person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig, her doctors announced Tuesday. Towana Looney, 53, is off of kidney dialysis after undergoing the
Normally, antibodies are protective proteins produced by our immune systems to fight bacteria or viruses. Their strength comes from their specificity—when you get ill, B cells in your immune system undergo an exquisitely
In a polytunnel on the Scottish island of Bute, thousands of spindly Scots pine seedlings are growing. On the surface, nothing could appear more commonplace than Scots pine growing in Scotland. But hidden
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For thousands of years, if you wanted to send a secret message, there was basically one way to do it. You’d scramble the
