NASA Adds Moon Base and Nuclear-Powered Mars Spacecraft to Road Map
The agency announced the more specific plans and timelines after years of suggesting it may build a lunar outpost.
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We’ve Been Underestimating Flying Foxes
Australia used to incinerate the large fruit bats, but research suggests they bring hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits to the count…
Wicked Stepmother No Longer, a Female Pharaoh Gets a Reputational Makeover
A reassessment of damaged 3,500-year-old statuary adds to evidence that Queen Hatshepsut wasn’t the villain that scholars long took her to…
David Botstein, Gene-Mapping Pioneer, Dies at 83
His method of locating genes in human DNA allowed researchers to find disease-causing genes, and later to map the entire, sprawling human ge…
‘The Last of Us’ on Eight Legs
A newly discovered species of spider in the Ecuadorean Amazon mimics a pathogen, known as a zombie fungus, to protect itself.
German Mathematician Wins Abel Prize for Number Theory Work
Gerd Faltings proved a conjecture that had been unsolved for six decades, using connections between numbers and geometry.
Exploding Comet Is Spotted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
In a stroke of luck, astronomers saw the comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) break into four or five fragments in November after it passed close to the…
James Barnard, a Global Force in Wastewater Treatment, Dies at 90
An environmental engineer, he invented a biological method to remove nitrogen and phosphorous from wastewater, an advance that transformed t…
Why Some Birds Seem to Be Developing a Cigarette Habit
Research from Poland adds to evidence from Latin American countries that compounds in used cigarette butts ward off parasites in bird nests.
A ‘Hail Mary’ for Earth, Built on Solid Science
Andy Weir discusses his science-fueled novel “Project Hail Mary,” which has been adapted into a film that opens in theaters on Friday.
How to Bring a Bird’s Song Back From the Edge of Extinction
In a new study, wild regent honeyeaters became vocal tutors, teaching their disappearing song to birds in a captive breeding program.
Spaceflight Started 100 Years Ago in a Massachusetts Cabbage Patch
Before humanity sent satellites, telescopes, humans and weapons into space, Robert Goddard experimented with the first liquid-fueled rocket …