Science

By The Atlantic

World News
Tiny ‘Zombies’ Rising from the Tundra
The Atlantic - Emily Buder
“There are several things about Longyearbyen that may seem ‘strange’ to visitors,” warns the Norwegian city’s tourist board. One of the northernmost settlements in the world, Longyearbyen, which is on
Stone Age
What Chewed-Up Gum Reveals About Life in the Stone Age
The Atlantic - Sarah Zhang
Chewed tar is an unexpectedly great source of ancient DNA. No one today quite understands how they did it, but people in the Stone Age could turn ribbons of birch bark into sticky, black tar. They used
Johnson Space Center
Spacesuits for Spiders
The Atlantic - Marina Koren
And what they tell us about the difficulty of keeping people alive in space. Recently, a user of an online forum for science-fiction writing posed an intriguing question to the rest of the community. the
Science
The Viruses That Eavesdrop on Their Hosts
The Atlantic - Ed Yong
By listening to signals exchanged by the bacteria they target, they can bide their time until they have enough fresh targets to infect. When bacteria talk, Bonnie Bassler listens. She just never figured
Science
What Happens When You’re Convinced You Have Bad Genes
The Atlantic - Sarah Zhang
DNA tests can have a placebo effect. The first thing you should know is that the DNA-test results everyone got in this study were fake. That was on purpose. Over the course of a year, psychologists at
Science
An Upheaval at the Ends of the World
The Atlantic - Robinson Meyer
Two new reports find that the North and South Poles face an “unprecedented” climate future. It was not so long ago—only 108 years, within a great-grandma’s memory—that a person’s eyes first beheld the
Science
The Recurring Dread of a Paralyzing Illness
The Atlantic - Ed Yong
The 2018 spike in acute flaccid myelitis has peaked, but the quest to understand this debilitating illness continues. In 2014, as summer transitioned into fall, many of Riley Bove’s friends, colleagues,
Science
What Keeps Black Holes From Expanding Everywhere?
The Atlantic - Natalie WolchoverQuanta
Black holes are somehow able to grow constantly without changing their size. Physics might finally be able to explain why. Leonard Susskind, a pioneer of string theory, the holographic principle and other
Science
How to Build a Museum in Outer Space
The Atlantic - Marina Koren
Researchers have begun to imagine how the people of the future might visit exhibits in orbit or on the moon. In 2001, Alice Gorman returned home after a long day of work, grabbed a cold beer, and settled
Science
City Frogs Are the Sexiest Frogs
The Atlantic - Ed Yong
Two new studies show how certain animals can adapt to the din of human activity in surprising ways. For years, the Darién Gap, a narrow strip of pristine rain forest connecting Central and South America,
Science
The Dog That’s Famous for Not Wanting to Be Eaten by a Coyote
The Atlantic - Amanda Mull
Meet Beanie. Her viral spiky vest is the latest in a long line of protective gear for pets. Earlier this week, an image of a tiny dog in some kind of wild neon dog armor began to ricochet around the internet.
Science
Humans Made Drones by Copying Birds. Birds Are Fighting Back.
The Atlantic - Rebecca Giggs
As machines fill the skies, they meet resistance from the animals who already live there. In the National Gallery of Australia’s permanent collection is a painting by Sidney Nolan titled The Alarm. One
Molecular Biology
Radio Atlantic: The First Gene-Edited Babies
The Atlantic - Kevin Townsend
A scientist has claimed he used the revolutionary CRISPR gene technology on human embryos, igniting a global controversy. Subscribe to Radio Atlantic: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play
Science
When a Killer Climate Catastrophe Struck the World's Oceans
The Atlantic - Peter Brannen
The worst extinction in Earth’s history offers chilling predictions for the planet’s future—and for humanity’s efforts to keep climate doom at bay. Identifying a killer can be difficult when it seems every
Science
An Ancient Case of the Plague Could Rewrite History
The Atlantic - Sarah Zhang
A 4,900-year-old skeleton has turned the accepted story of the disease on its head. The troublesome teeth belonged to a woman buried in Sweden. She lived 4,900 years ago, and she died young. Archaeologists
Genetics
The CRISPR Baby Scandal Gets Worse by the Day
The Atlantic - Ed Yong
The alleged creation of the world's first gene-edited infants was full of technical errors and ethical blunders. Here are the 15 most damning details. Updated on December 4 at 10:55 a.m. ET. Before last
Science
The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting
The Atlantic - Robinson Meyer
After years of infighting, the Democrats may finally have found an environmental consensus in the Green New Deal. On Monday, speaking at a town hall led by Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative-Elect
Science
Neil deGrasse Tyson, #MeToo, and the Celebrity Photo Op
The Atlantic - Marina Koren
A picture with a famous person can cause uncomfortable misunderstandings or, worse still, encourage predatory behavior. In 2009, hundreds of astronomers gathered in Long Beach, California, for the annual
Science
Soyuz Is Back in Business
The Atlantic - Marina Koren
Russia has resumed crewed flights to the International Space Station after a failed attempt. That’s good news for NASA. A three-person crew has successfully launched to space and toward the International
Science
‘We’re All Hallucinating All of the Time’
The Atlantic - Emily Buder
Many people assume that they perceive the world as it actually is—as if eyes and ears were windows that allow us to access an objective reality. But perception is not an accurate reflection of an externally
Science
Project Troy: How Scientists Helped Refine Cold War Psychological Warfare
The Atlantic - Audra Wolfe
By working for the CIA, a crack team of researchers honed the United States’ first formal peacetime campaign of propaganda and manipulation. The phrase Cold War didn’t always refer to a time period. In
Science
How to Measure All the Starlight in the Universe
The Atlantic - Marina Koren
Astrophysicists have devised a clever way to count up the photons in space, stretching back to the cosmos’ adolescence. Until the 20th century, astronomers were stuck on a question that seems as if it
Technology
NASA Administrator on Elon Musk: ‘That Was Not Appropriate Behavior’
The Atlantic - Marina Koren
Jim Bridenstine recently told the SpaceX founder he doesn’t want NASA contractors engaging in questionable behavior. If Elon Musk wants to launch American astronauts into space, he can’t smoke weed and
World News
An Ingenious Autodidact in the Mountains of Tajikistan
The Atlantic - Emily Buder
Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis and Maude Plante-Husaruk, both filmmakers, were researching their upcoming trip to Central Asia when they first heard a man named Raïmberdi talk about plants. “We stumbled upon a
Science
The Bacteria Lurking in American Showerheads
The Atlantic - Rob Dunn
The water that flows through your home is teeming with microbial life. Trying to kill it off likely does more harm than good. In 1654, Rembrandt painted a woman, in Amsterdam, bathing in a stream. As lifts
Molecular Biology
2.4-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools Turn Up in an Unexpected Place
The Atlantic - Ed Yong
Artifacts found in Algeria complicate the story of early-human evolution. To the untrained eye, the rock would have looked like any other. But when Mohamed Sahnouni pulled it out of the ground in the of
Molecular Biology
There’s a Spider That Makes Milk
The Atlantic - Ed Yong
It feeds its young a white, nutritious fluid secreted from its underside. From the start, Zhanqi Chen realized that something was odd about the spiders. He had first spotted the species, known as Toxeus
Science
The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert
The Atlantic - Rebecca Boyle
In the Martian landscape that is the Atacama desert, astrobiologists are learning how to recognize extraterrestrial organisms. Mary Beth Wilhelm’s right arm shot out of the passenger window, and the convoy
Science
Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck
The Atlantic - Patrick CollisonMichael Nielsen
Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong? The writer Stewart Brand once wrote that “science is the only news.” While