The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In May 2014, NASA announced at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached a
Measles is making a comeback in the Americas. The United States may soon have to return its gold medal status of measles elimination, a ranking bestowed by the World Health Organization that signals
More than 2,000 years ago, pretty much every educated human knew the Earth was round. There are some pretty obvious clues, after all. If you travel south, you see stars and constellations you’ve
Belém, Brazil — The Amazon rainforest is a poster child for the perils of climate change. Deforestation and warming temperatures threaten to push the iconic forest past its limits. So Belém, in the heart
In 2009, Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team were combing the desert landscape of Burtele, a paleontological site in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, when Stephanie Melillo found something remarkable: an ancient, humanlike foot bone.
When the wind blows on Mars, electricity crackles through the air. For the first time, scientists have detected electricity in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. A microphone on NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the sounds
Gratitude is arguably as quintessential to Thanksgiving as turkey, cranberry sauce and the kumbaya story of Pilgrims and Native Americans coming together. The word “thanks” is, after all, right there in the holiday’s
In recent months, the Trump administration has opened a deregulatory floodgate in the name of building more data centers. Among other things, this has involved ordering rollbacks of clean water regulations and opening
The US space agency ended months of speculation about the next flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, confirming that the vehicle will carry only cargo to the International Space Station. NASA and Boeing are
The koalas clambering around eucalyptus canopies may be cuddly herbivores, but their extinct relatives were horrifying predators. The charismatic marsupials are the closest living relatives of marsupial lions — powerful carnivores that went
