On August 19 Hurricane Erin is crawling past the Bahamas as a strong Category 2 storm and is due to head toward the Carolinas and then veer northeast over the open Atlantic Ocean. Although the storm’s eye may never come within 300 miles of the mainland U.S., most of the East Coast—from Miami to Maine—is…
Waste from a mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo contains cobalt, copper and other minerals Pascal Maitre/Panos Pictures Frigid, remote and mostly uninhabited, Greenland isn’t a place that usually attracts much attention. But the autonomous Danish territory has been making headlines this year, with US President Donald Trump bellowing about acquiring it. Why…
August 19, 2025 2 min read NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Discovers New Moon of Uranus Using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have spotted a moon nestled near Uranus’s rings that’s so small you could walk around it By Andrea Tamayo edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier An image of Uranus taken by NASA’s…
The man who received the brain stimulation had previously tried 20 treatments for his depression Damien Fair et al./CC-By 4.0 A man who had severe depression for more than three decades appears to have gone into remission, thanks to a bespoke brain “pacemaker” that selectively activates different areas of his brain. “He experienced joy for…
Human breast tissue may be capable of hosting — and passing on — bird flu. Human mammary glands contain sugars that avian influenza can latch onto to infect cells, researchers report August 8 at medRxiv.org. The finding, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, raises the possibility that nursing babies could be infected with bird flu…
Many ships have tried to reach the floating tongue of Thwaites Glacier—a 130-kilometer-wide conveyor belt of ice that slides off West Antarctica’s coast and splinters into the sea. Thwaites is rapidly destabilizing, and precise mapping of the seafloor and ocean currents surrounding it are urgently needed to know how much damage the crumbling glacier and…
Astronomers have found a new moon nested among the 28 others near Uranus NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. El Mou A small and dim moon has been discovered in orbit around Uranus, bringing the planet’s total to 29. Many of the gas giant’s other moons are named after characters from works by William Shakespeare, and…
Fifty years ago, “fractal” was born. In a 1975 book, the Polish-French-American mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot coined the term to describe a family of rough, fragmented shapes that fall outside the boundaries of conventional geometry. Mathematicians had been describing these types of shapes since the late 19th century. But by giving them a name — derived from…
August 19, 2025 4 min read Investing in Public Education Will Strengthen the U.S. The U.S. is a global powerhouse. Public education is one of the main reasons why By The Editors Public education in the U.S. is under attack. Whether at the local, state or federal level, political and religious groups have pushed for…
The Shape of WonderAlan Lightman and Martin ReesPantheon, $28 One of my closest friends is a neuroscientist, investigating how brain cells develop and how they search for and choose other brain cells to connect with. Her research can sound intimidating, but when she’s not trying to decode the mysteries of one of the body’s least…
