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For billions of years on Earth, life was limited to simple unicellular, non-differentiated organisms. In a mere flash, that changed forever.

Metaphors like the Great Chain of Being can lead people to misunderstand evolution and humanity’s place in the web of life.

Scientists have been chasing the dream of harnessing the reactions that power the Sun since the dawn of the atomic era. Interest, and investment, in the carbon-free energy source is heating up.

Ocean fertilization is extremely controversial, but if done correctly, it just might work.

For centuries, Newton’s inverse square law of gravity worked beautifully, but no one knew why. Here’s how Einstein finally explained it.

Sometimes called “the new gold,” sand is the second most exploited natural resource in the world after fresh water.

In 1924, sociologist and social reformer Caroline Bartlett Crane designed an award-winning tiny home in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Its apples taste bad, but institutions all over the world want a descendant or clone of the tree, anyway.

Lab-grown meat may work better as a complement to animal agriculture rather than a replacement of it.

A study on the “moral circles” of liberals and conservatives gets drafted into the culture wars — with mixed results.

Did fire change the development of the human brain?

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Nurse defines the 5 core principles of life.

Overwintering is profoundly stressful for trees. So why do they bother?

They are expected to be cheaper to build and even more reliable than today’s nuclear plants.

For better and worse, the Columbian Exchange plugged the Americas into the global system — and there was no going back.

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Plants are very sensitive to touch, with research showing that touching a plant can change its genome and launch a cascade of plant hormones.

Despite billions of years of life on Earth, humans first arose only ~300,000 years ago. It took all that time to make our arrival possible.

Former Yale professor Dr. Morgan Levine shares 3 ways to change your diet to extend your life.

A 19th-century surveying mistake kept lumberjacks away from what is now Minnesota’s largest patch of old-growth trees.

Pando is a stand of aspen in Utah that is 14,000 years old and weighs 12 million pounds. Humans threaten to end its long reign.

Flashy desalination technology is more costly and cumbersome than many other solutions.

Americans on average consumed about 58 pounds of beef and veal in 2019 – compared with a global average of 14 pounds.

These nematodes complicate how we understand evolutionary lineages.

Ironically, the company did so using technology perfected by the oil industry.

Meet the power plant of the future.

The war in Ukraine is unlikely to trigger a catastrophic nuclear meltdown. Physics and smart engineering are the reasons why.

With such a vast Universe and raw ingredients that seem to be everywhere, could it really be possible that humanity is truly alone?

Our minds seem both physical and intangible. That paradox has gripped this neuroscientist since childhood.

A common weed uses uncommon types of photosynthesis.