Newly discovered African fossils lend a hand to suspicions that an ancient hominid outside our own genus, Homo, made and used stone and bone tools. Partial remains of a roughly 1.5-million-year-old Paranthropus boisei
Many science fiction and fantasy stories are enveloped in a warm glow, and it’s not just because of nostalgia. Some characters literally glow — from ET’s fingertip to the demon markings in this
SpaceX closed a troubled but instructive chapter in its Starship rocket program Monday with a near-perfect test flight that carried the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world from South Texas to the
Chicago’s viral ‘Rat Hole’ is less rat splat, more squirrel squish. Researchers determined it was probably a squirrel that left a rodent-shaped impression in the concrete of the Windy City. Their new study,
After the latest round of mass firings at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the weekend, the union that represents agency employees estimates that around 3,000 people this year—about a
Comet 3I/Atlas continues to be full of surprises. As well as being only the third interstellar object ever detected, new analysis shows it is producing hydroxyl (OH) emissions, with these compounds betraying the
The Water RemembersAmy Bowers CordalisLittle Brown & Co., $30 In September 2002, an estimated 34,000 to 78,000 adult Chinook salmon died in the Klamath River within the Yurok Reservation in Northern California. The
Carly Kay is the Fall 2025 science writing intern at Science News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a master’s degree in science communication from the
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An aspiring chemist goes to college, realizes she’s not good at chemistry, and bombs her dissertation. She takes a class in standup comedy and decides
A recent study of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has detected several organic compounds that had never been recorded there before. The findings, published this month in Nature Astronomy, provide new clues about
