Science

Our Planet’s Magnetic Poles Aren’t Reversing Any Time Soon

Over the past couple of hundred years, the strength of the Earth’s geomagnetic field has been waning, leading scientists to wonder if our planet’s polarity is on the verge of flipping. A new study suggests this won’t happen in the near future—and that the intensity of today’s field is uncharacteristically strong. Predicting a geomagnetic flip…

Physics & Chemistry George Dvorsky

This Colorful Snail Is Disappearing Because of Over-Fishing and Shell Collectors

This is the “flamingo tongue snail,” one of the most brightly colored snails on the reefs of the South Atlantic. It used to be a common sight, but in recent years has been disappearing, either because fate has a cruel sense of humor or people are uneducated jerks. Or both. The flamingo tongue snail spends…

Biology Esther Inglis-Arkell

Your Doctor Does Not Give a Crap About Your Fitness Tracker Data

Patients are increasingly bringing their fitness-tracker data to their checkups. Not only are doctors ill-equipped to deal with this information—they’re skeptical that it’s even useful. As Andrew Rosenblum points out in his latest MIT Technology Review article, doctors are profoundly unimpressed with wearables manufactured by the likes of Fitbit, Apple, and Pebble. As patients disclose…

Health George Dvorsky

Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Just Made a Beautifully Controlled Vertical Landing

SpaceX has been trying—and failing—to neatly land its rockets on a barge for months now. But Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space company seems to have made a beautifully controlled landing on solid ground with its own New Shepard craft. In the video, Blue Origin—Bezos’s private space firm—shows its most recent launch of its New Shepard…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

Earth Could Be Surrounded By Long Hairs of Dark Matter

Our planet may be surrounded by filaments of dark matter stretching away from its surface, according to a new study published by NASA researchers. In a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has used computer simulations to establish how dark matter—the mysterious stuff that is reckoned to…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

Hard Labour: The Case For Testing Drugs on Pregnant Women

Traditionally, expectant mothers have been excluded from clinical trials, but could this practice be doing more harm than good? Emily Anthes investigates. When the heart stops beating, minutes matter. With every minute that passes before a rhythm is restored, a patient’s odds of survival plummet. Which is why Anne Lyerly was surprised when, one night…

Health Emily Anthes

This NYC Subway Map Shows How Many Calories You Could Be Burning By Walking

We know life would be better if we’d get off our butts and walk more. But when??? This map shows the health opportunities hidden in plain sight by mapping the calories hypothetically burned if we’d ditch the subway/Uber/hoverboard and walk. During London’s tube strike, Transport for London created an alternative transit map that showed walk…

Health Alissa Walker

The Painstaking Business of Road Tripping With a Satellite

Gently now. Gently. As a piece of hardware, a satellite is a paradoxical mix of super-strength materials and utterly fragile components. It needs to withstand the heat, cold, and g-forces of space travel—but still be able to take super-sensitive readings from hundreds of carefully-calibrated components. There are more than two thousand satellites in orbit today,…

Space & Spaceflight Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

Watch as Scientists Use Heat to Steer Droplets Across a Surface

Watch as these droplets zip towards the heated spots on a plate. The secret: the drop isn’t directly on the plate. It’s on a shallow pool of liquid covering the platform. What you’re seeing is no ordinary plate. It’s supported by titanium micro-heaters and it’s covered with a pool of liquid. The heaters are used…

Physics & Chemistry Esther Inglis-Arkell

Black People in New York Suffer from Depression More Than Any Other Group in the City

While sitcoms are full of New Yorkers gabbing about therapy, the reality is that many people in the city suffer from mental health issues that go untreated. Health data gathered by city mental health workers shows that one group is overwhelmingly neglected: black New Yorkers. Every year since 2002, New York’s Department of Health and…

Health Chelsey B. Coombs

Shrikes Are Even Meaner Than We Suspected

Shrikes are nondescript and ubiquitous birds that have made a name for themselves as the leatherfaces of the animal kingdom. They don’t just eat their prey, they impale it on spikes and display is as part of their courtship ritual. That’s nasty enough, but they have one other trick up their sleeves. A shrike doesn’t…

Biology Esther Inglis-Arkell

The U.S. Now Has a Space Hotline With China

Next time POTUS needs to talk space with China, it’ll be a straightforward process: it turns out Washington and Beijing now have an emergency “space hotline” to ensure conflicts don’t arise. The Financial Times reports that the new phone line—which sounds an awful lot like the Red Telephone used to communicate between Moscow and Washington…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

Independent Health Review: Ebola Response for West Africa Was ‘Too Slow’

A panel of independent health experts has published a report that explains how a slow international response and a lack of appropriate leadership in tacking the Ebola epidemic caused “needless suffering and death” across West Africa. The team, made up of health experts from the Harvard Global Health Institute and the London School of Hygiene…

Health Jamie Condliffe

The Physicist Who Defied the Temperance Laws of 1905 Berkeley

Ludwig Boltzmann is best known as the Austrian physicist who wrote down the statistical formula for entropy, but if the physics thing hadn’t worked out, he would have made an excellent travel writer. The travelogue he composed of his 1905 trip to Berkeley, California, is chock-full of amusing anecdotes, keen observations, and local history of…

Physics & Chemistry Jennifer Ouellette

You Can Recreate This Cool Fluid Dynamics Experiment With a Wine Glass

This is a pretty simple experiment to create nifty interior fountains — although maybe not as cool as the ones in this video. Take a container, like a wine glass or a bowl, hold it upside down, lower it into liquid, and jiggle it around. Voila! Instant fountain. The fluid in this video is silicone…

Physics & Chemistry Esther Inglis-Arkell

A New Sensor Can Sniff Out Gold Inside Space Rocks

There’s gold in them thar asteroids—if only we could find it. Well, and get to it, extract it, and haul it back to Earth. You know, details. But that first part just got easier, thanks to a clever new sensor designed to sniff out gold, platinum, and even diamond inside asteroids. The sensor, technically a…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

This Is How We Know a Supernova Is Coming in 2016

In early 2016, astronomers will be looking at a specific part of the sky, knowing with near certainty that a supernova will appear. How is it possible to predict such events? The answer has to do with an effect known as gravitational lensing. Technically, the 2016 supernova is a “replay” of the supernova Refsdal, first…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

A Swarm of Satellites Will Soon Keep Us Safe From Fires

The GIF above, created by NASA, may leave you wondering why our government is building a planetary shield. Something you’re not telling us, NASA? According to the space agency, NASA’s shield plan has nothing to do with intergalactic threats—it’s protection against a danger on the ground. The space agency wants to build a global network…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

FDA Approves Salmon the First GM Animal Safe to Eat, Doesn’t Require Labels

After decades of indecision, the Food and Drug Administration has finally approved its first genetically modified animal as safe to eat. Welcome a fast-growing GM Atlantic Salmon to your plate. Following extensive research, the Administration has declared that AquAdvantage salmon are “as safe to eat as any non-genetically engineered Atlantic salmon, and also as nutritious.”…

Health Jamie Condliffe

New Case of Ebola Identified in Liberia

Reports from health authorities in Liberia have confirmed that a new case of Ebola has been identified in the country, which had previously been declared Ebola-free. The Associated Press reports that a 10-year-old boy has been diagnosed with Ebola. He was taken to treatment center outside the nations’s capital, Monrovia, on Thursday, where he is…

Health Jamie Condliffe

Our Planet’s Magnetic Poles Aren’t Reversing Any Time Soon

This Colorful Snail Is Disappearing Because of Over-Fishing and Shell Collectors

Your Doctor Does Not Give a Crap About Your Fitness Tracker Data

Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Just Made a Beautifully Controlled Vertical Landing

Earth Could Be Surrounded By Long Hairs of Dark Matter

Hard Labour: The Case For Testing Drugs on Pregnant Women

This NYC Subway Map Shows How Many Calories You Could Be Burning By Walking

The Painstaking Business of Road Tripping With a Satellite

Watch as Scientists Use Heat to Steer Droplets Across a Surface

Black People in New York Suffer from Depression More Than Any Other Group in the City

Shrikes Are Even Meaner Than We Suspected

The U.S. Now Has a Space Hotline With China

Independent Health Review: Ebola Response for West Africa Was ‘Too Slow’

The Physicist Who Defied the Temperance Laws of 1905 Berkeley

You Can Recreate This Cool Fluid Dynamics Experiment With a Wine Glass

A New Sensor Can Sniff Out Gold Inside Space Rocks

This Is How We Know a Supernova Is Coming in 2016

A Swarm of Satellites Will Soon Keep Us Safe From Fires

FDA Approves Salmon the First GM Animal Safe to Eat, Doesn’t Require Labels

New Case of Ebola Identified in Liberia

Roku’s 2025 Streaming Stick HD Is 40% Off to Compete With Amazon Fire TV Stick During Spring Sale

Epstein Victims Sue Google, Claim AI Mode Exposed Personal Information

‘Wicked Spot’ Is a Fun, Sapphic Rom-Com That Yeets a Witch Into the Magical World of Influencer Culture

Anthropic and OpenAI Just Gave Us a Glimpse Into the Future of Model Pricing

Amazon Slashes 63% Off Acer Aspire Desktop for a Limited-Time Spring Sale, With Keyboard and Mouse Included

Smart Glasses Now Have One of the Vision Pro’s Best Features

Marvel Just Put ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2 in a Very Weird Place in the MCU Timeline

Trump Drops $1B to Kill 2 Wind Farms, Then Watches a Bigger One Go Online

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

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