Science

Much of northeastern Japan is well along in recovering from the magnitude 9 earthquake and 40-meter tsunami of 11 March 2011. However, at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, “We’re still just very near the starting line” for cleaning up after the meltdowns and explosions triggered by the natural disasters, […]

One evening in June 2011, Masaharu Tsubokura went to bed and found he couldn’t close his left eye. His face was paralyzed, and for a few weeks the doctor who had spent months counseling residents displaced by a massive nuclear disaster was himself a patient.

A comprehensive survey of corals has turned up billions of colonies across the Pacific Ocean. The work—based on actual head counts, satellite data, and informed estimates—suggests many species are not in immediate danger of extinction, and the census could help conservationists and policymakers make better decisions about how to protect […]

Think of humanity’s worst plagues, and the Black Death, the Spanish flu, and COVID-19 all come to mind. Millions have died in those deadly pandemics, but their toll pales in comparison with that of tuberculosis (TB), which has killed more than 1 billion people over the past 2000 years—and still […]

Science‘s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.

For a glimpse of the power of sexual selection, the dance of the golden-collared manakin is hard to beat. Each June in the rainforests of Panama, the sparrow-size male birds gather to fluff their brilliant yellow throats, lift their wings, and clap them together in rapid fire, up to 60 […]

A startup chasing the dream of plentiful, safe, carbon-free electricity from fusion, the energy source of the Sun, has settled on a site, timetable, and key technology for building its compact reactor. Flush with more than $200 million from investors, including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy, 3-year old Commonwealth Fusion Systems […]