Science

COVID might be fought efficiently with fewer shutdowns by restricting activities only in a particular area with a population up to 200,000 when its case rate rises above a chosen threshold.  

The company aims to bring back commercial supersonic flight by 2025.

This week the whole show focuses on keeping cool in a warming world. First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Senior News Correspondent Elizabeth Pennisi about the latest research into how to stay safe when things heat up—whether you’re running marathons or fighting fires. 

Two years ago, Mars went undercover. Martian dust storms are common, but every decade or so, for reasons unknown, a monstrous one goes global, veiling the planet. The storms can be a mortal threat to exploration: The one in 2018 killed off NASA’s Opportunity rover by coating its solar panels […]

DELAWARE, OHIO—On a weekday morning in August, just one pickup truck sat in the sprawling visitors’ parking lot here at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Forestry Sciences Laboratory. A decadeslong decline in research funding had been slowly quieting the place—and then came the pandemic.

Rare shorebirds called phalaropes practice an unusual water dance to help them consume their prey: They spin in tight, quick circles on the water by kicking one foot harder than the other, creating upward jets that pump tiny, out-of-reach insects and crustaceans toward the surface. The birds then dip their […]

The elegance was lost somewhere along the way.

Preliminary study suggests consuming spicy peppers may reduce death by all causes by up to a quarter.

Eta Carinae has been exploding for nearly 200 years, and now we’re firing lasers at it.