The tropical vlei rat has fur that shimmers with iridescent hues Jessica Leigh Dobson More than a dozen mammal species shimmer and glint purple and green, like precious opals. Their fur is iridescent, meaning its colour appears to change depending on the animal’s orientation relative to the viewer. The effect is similar to an oil…
September 9, 2025 3 min read A ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Report Goes Easy on the Food Industry A childhood health report led by RFK, Jr., links poor diet, chemicals, inactivity and “overmedicalization” to worsening U.S. pediatric health By Dan Vergano edited by Jeanna Bryner Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Criticisms of the food industry have gone…
Has an asteroid impact influenced the course of human evolution? Anna Ivanova/Alamy This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. I am old enough to remember when the idea an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs was new and…
If we’ll ever find life outside our solar system, it will not be an instant discovery. Save for the slim possibility of an intelligent civilization beaming a message in our direction, evidence for aliens will most likely come from scrutinizing nearby rocky worlds by using giant telescopes to study their atmospheres for gases that could…
The wildebeest migration of the Serengeti involves fewer animals than we had thought Nicholas Tinelli / Alamy East Africa’s “Great Migration” is generally estimated to involve as many as 1.3 million wildebeest. But in reality, fewer than 600,000 of the animals might move across the Serengeti Mara landscape each year, according to an AI analysis…
NASA’s InSight lander listened to Marsquakes for four years. The tremors revealed that Mars may have a solid inner core.
September 8, 2025 4 min read Trump’s Health Cuts Leave States with Gaping Holes in Disease Surveillance AI now scans for bird flu and measles news, but public health officials say outbreaks can go undetected as the U.S. guts national and global tracking By Charles Schmidt edited by Josh Fischman Dead birds infected with bird…
Imagine the year is 2050 and the world has devised a way to stop global warming. No, not by doing the hard work of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but by spraying reflective particles into the stratosphere that dim the sun. The strategy works: temperatures at ground level stabilise, and life goes on as normal despite…
When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, its effects on human health were all over the news. Cyntia Duval, a women’s health researcher at the University of Toronto at the time, wondered how its consumption might affect female fertility. To her surprise, there was almost no information on the subject — though there was plenty of…
In January President Donald Trump made a bold pronouncement, calling for colossal investment in a missile defense shield called Iron Dome for America, later renamed the Golden Dome for America. It would coordinate missile interceptors that could be fired from the ground or from space, as well as radar arrays, lasers, electronic weapons and networks…
