Life
Pterosaur Wings Were Probably Far More Varied Than Reconstructions Suggest
The one thing every pterosaur reconstruction needs is the one thing no pterosaur fossil preserves.
Jun 23, 2026
Health
Honeybees Have a Unique Genetic Switch for Building Workers
Inside a sealed wax cell, a pale grub is dismantling itself. Over a handful of days it will liquefy much of what it is and rebuild from the wreckage: legs, wings, the compound eyes, the brain that will one day navigate to a flower and back.
Jun 23, 2026
Technology
New Solid Material Turns Ordinary Sunlight Into High-Energy UV Light
Two cups of warm water will never give you one cup of boiling water. Pour them together and you get a larger volume of lukewarm water, nothing more.
Jun 23, 2026
Health
Weight-Loss Drug Boom Sent Poison Control Calls Soaring, and Most Were Avoidable
Somewhere in a poison control center, a phone rings, and the person on the other end has been injecting their weight-loss medication every single day.
Jun 23, 2026
Earth & Environment
Africa's Tree-Planting Boom Is Overlooking the Trees That Feed People
The mbula plum does not look like a solution to anything. It is a scrubby, slow-growing thing, common across the woodlands of Malawi, the sort of tree a passer-by might walk straight past.
Jun 23, 2026
Health
A Herpes Vaccine That Works by Stationing Immune Cells at the Front Door
The virus comes in through the vaginal lining and wastes no time. Within hours, herpes simplex virus 2 has slipped into nerve endings, riding them up into the dense clusters of cells near the base of the spine, where it settles in for good.
Jun 22, 2026
Life
Our Ancestors Got Bigger in One Late Leap, Not a Slow Climb Toward Modern Humans
Lay 386 fossil bodies out across two and a half million years and the shape they make is not the one you were taught.
Jun 22, 2026
Technology
Ice Cream Ingredient Lets Builders Print Walls Out of Dirt
A nozzle moves back and forth over a print bed, laying down ribbons of wet earth, one 8-millimetre layer at a time.
Jun 22, 2026
Brain & Behavior
Why People Keep Coming Back to the Bargaining Table When a Woman Is on the Other Side
Run the numbers far enough and a curious gap opens up. Take two negotiators, identical in every economic respect, closing the same deals for the same money.
Jun 22, 2026
Technology
Food Waste Becomes Jet Fuel Good Enough to Fly On Its Own
Scrape the plates from a city's worth of dinners, slurry it into a continuous reactor, and hold it in water at 280 degrees and pressures that would crush a submarine.
Jun 22, 2026
Health
HPV Vaccine Has Driven Cervical Cancer Deaths in England's Youngest Women Down to Nothing
For five straight years, across the whole of England, not a single woman between the ages of 20 and 24 died of cervical cancer.
Jun 19, 2026
Life
How a Mars Life Detector Traced Meteorite Grime to Car Exhaust
The Murchison meteorite has been sitting in collections since 1969, when it broke apart over the Australian state of Victoria and scattered in pieces across paddocks and roadsides.
Jun 19, 2026
Space
Tiny Asteroid Donaldjohanson Tumbles Because Sunlight Slowed It Down
For 59 days before the encounter, the asteroid would not hold still. Lucy's long-range camera kept watching this faint smudge of reflected light from millions…
Jun 19, 2026
Health
Chewing Sugary Gum After a Beetroot Shot Pushes Blood Pressure Down
On the tongue of every person reading this sits a small chemical factory, staffed by bacteria, that turns the nitrate in your dinner into something your blood vessels can actually use.
Jun 19, 2026