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Genetic analysis reveals that a specimen collected in 2019 is the same subspecies as one caught more than a century earlier.

Since the time of Galileo, Saturn’s rings have remained an unexplained mystery. A new idea may have finally solved the longstanding puzzle.

65 million years ago, an asteroid strike caused the 5th great mass extinction. Could we save Earth, today, from a similar event?

1859’s Carrington event gave us a preview of how catastrophic the Sun could be for humanity. But it could get even worse than we imagined.

With a telescope at just the right distance from the Sun, we could use its gravity to enhance and magnify a potentially inhabited planet.

Discussions of human evolution are usually backward looking, as if the greatest triumphs and challenges were in the distant past.

The beauty of this magical medicine called silence is that it is available to all of us, even in cities, if only we care to listen.

How can we understand mysterious planets like Jupiter? Use giant lasers!

The first world that humans should inhabit beyond the Earth is the Moon, not Mars. Here’s why terraforming our lunar neighbor is so appealing.

Finland reveals that happiness is more about mindset than umbrella drinks and sun-warmed beaches.

The first personality tests revolved around assessing people’s reactions to ambiguous and often unsettling images. Today, the gold standard is a barrage of questions.

America’s war in Southeast Asia is fading fast from memory. These maps offer a horrific reminder.

How (not) to end up in the ash heap of history.

About the project The goal of driving more progress across the world—scientifically, politically, economically, socially, etc—is one shared by many. And yet, debates about the best way to maximize progress […]

While Mars is known as a frozen, red planet today, it has all the evidence we could ask for of a watery past, lasting for approximately the first 1.5 billion […]

Civilization is facing an existential threat from climate change. Will we humans make it? Does anyone in the universe make it?

Philosophers and scientists spent millennia arguing about the nature of light. It turned out to be stranger than anyone imagined.

An unexpected finding shows us how little we know about the early human story in our region.

These enormous centipedes are straight out of science fiction.

This is your brain on work.

A “seafood mafia” is plying the waters between India and Sri Lanka to satisfy China’s appetite for an increasingly rare delicacy.

For decades, researchers have proposed that climate change and human-caused environmental destruction led to demographic collapse on Easter Island. That’s probably false, according to new research.

Most “irrecoverable carbon” is concentrated in these tiny bits of the Earth’s land mass. Can we keep it there?

Using a laboratory model, scientists get a nice Jovian surprise.

Science can teach us so much about our planet, but something more must compel us to take care of it. If you want to understand our planet, the best way to […]

Rocks from two hundred million years ago show us how everything died and how nothing is new.

Mastodons, rhinos, and even camels — all in the great state of California.

If our nearest star has an Earth-like planet, here’s how we’ll see it. As seen from up close, the signs of not only life, but our intelligent, technologically advanced human civilization […]

Sometimes, new combinations of preexisting things revolutionize life.

It’s not for climate science and condensed matter physics. It’s for advancing our understanding beyond spherical cows.