Raindrops are tiny lightning bolts, and they’re corroding cars, study finds
Finding reveals an overlooked way that water can damage surfaces.
Jacek Krywko
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79
Science // Science & Exploration
El Niño is now stronger than at any point in the last 1,000 years, study finds
“One more warning sign here of what we’re facing in a warmer world.”
Jacek Krywko
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85
NASA’s next “great observatory” begins mission to widen our view of the Universe
“We would need over half a million 4K TVs to fully display the single Roman image from our largest survey.”
Stephen Clark
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90
Why did 1,000 world citizens bury their underpants?
Study: Land use is the biggest factor in determining decomposition rates of organic cotton underpants.
Jennifer Ouellette
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46
Traders brought Central American cacao to Georgia 1,000 years ago
“We built this city on good cacao” does have a nice ring to it.
Kiona N. Smith
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50
Researchers get two genetic codes to work at the same time
Messing with the genetic code might have gotten a bit easier to do.
John Timmer
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41
Preserving glow-in-the-dark art and fashion for future generations
Understanding unique photochemistry of such materials will help in conservation, storage, and exhibition.
Jennifer Ouellette
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22
Lab supply companies have been selling antibodies using manipulated images
Image changes that would get a paper retracted are widespread among suppliers.
John Timmer
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43
Most Read
Buyer beware: Those mummified remains might carry toxic spores
“Mummified remains sold online exhibit signs of biodeterioration, yet sellers provide no safety guidance.”
Jennifer Ouellette
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38
Trump tried to curb clean energy. It’s booming anyway.
Capacity will rise by a record 45GW this year, according to S&P Global Energy.
Financial Times
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269
Volcanoes that made history
Enormous eruptions altered Earth’s climate and societies all over the globe.
Knowable Magazine
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45
Putting mice into hibernation causes a major loss of synapses
Hibernation cuts down on synapses, but mice seem to retain memories anyway.
Jacek Krywko
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66
Dismantling the Roadless Rule threatens to disrupt wildlife and water in US
Lands free of roads are under threat from the Trump administration’s proposed rollback.
Mariah Meek and Travis Belote, The Conversation
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77
Thunder + fiber-optic cabling used for seismic imaging
Thunderstorms make seismic waves that can be used to find sub-surface features.
John Timmer
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23
SpaceX’s orbital data centers would create a new category of e-waste
The yeetcycling math resembles asteroid mining in reverse.
Scott K. Johnson
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252
Scientists find closest star to the Milky Way’s central black hole
Star, moving at 8% the speed of light, may let us measure the black hole’s rotation.
John Timmer
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87
Against all odds, SpaceX finally tugs Starship into port after 24 days at sea
“A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle.”
Stephen Clark
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181
X-rays add new twist to narwhal’s spiral tusk
New study finds that the tusks have not one but two spirals, twisting in opposite directions.
Jennifer Ouellette
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31
As temperatures get hotter, pesticides are more dangerous to farmworkers
Research shows heat amplifies the dangers of pesticides.
Inside Climate News
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21
Theban tomb reveals how Egyptian burial trends evolved in time
Practices shifted from individuals buried in coffins to reusing sites for later mummy interments.
Jennifer Ouellette
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24
The Moon’s shadow raced across the heart of Spain, and I was there to see it
Here’s what it was like watching a total solar eclipse 90 minutes north of Madrid.
Stephen Clark
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73
Meet the only known trebuchet casualty in history
“It highlights the brutality of medieval warfare,” said paleopathologist Jo Buckberry.
Kiona N. Smith
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162
Wildfire smoke now bigger prenatal threat than human sources of air pollution
Regulations reduced prenatal exposure to harmful emissions, but wildfire smoke is erasing gains.
Inside Climate News
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72
So much solar: Digging into the list of every US power plant that went online this year
Utility-scale solar leads by a mile, followed by batteries. Fossil fuels, not so much.
Inside Climate News
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278
We’ve flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked
Let’s shield the astronauts instead of the spacecraft.
Jacek Krywko
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112
Have physicists finally discovered glueballs? New evidence points to yes.
“It’s the strongest evidence yet that particles dominated by a glueball component can exist in nature.”
Jennifer Ouellette
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66
Did poop enable the evolution of complex animals?
In a recent study, evolution gets even messier than usual.
Kiona N. Smith
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53
Tracking extreme heat by the hour makes climate change seem even worse
Hot hours of summer could triple in the coming decades.
Scott K. Johnson
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103
Dogs can tell if you’re scared or sad
fMRI scans show happiness, fear, anger, and sadness have distinct brain activity patterns in doggy brains.
Jennifer Ouellette
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142
Peer review is overwhelmed—can it survive in the AI era?
As research and AI-assisted papers surge, volunteer reviewers struggle to keep up.
Saima Sidik
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91
Mount Toba eruption doesn’t seem like it could nearly kill our species
The massive Toba eruption seems to have had little climate impact.
Jacek Krywko
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102
DeepMind’s hurricane breakthrough has surprised weather scientists
Open source WeatherNext model can make accurate predictions with lower-resolution weather data.
WIRED
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77
The ultimate eclipse chase: A Concorde raced against the Moon’s shadow
Fitted with telescopes, the plane did our longest imaging of the Sun’s corona.
Dhananjay Khadilkar
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87
How snails engineer their slime
Collagen and calcium work in tandem to achieve varying mechanical properties of different kinds of mucus.
Jennifer Ouellette
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19
The world’s biggest solar telescope caught vortexes on the Sun’s surface
We expected them to be there, but they had previously been too small to see.
Jacek Krywko
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37
Trump is losing his war on wind power
A court rules that a hold on all wind projects clearly violates the law.
John Timmer
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173