Science
Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling
Finally, an explanation for Bitchy Resting Face Nation
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Projects
What's the Best Planet?
NASA Venus, the Best and Brightest
A historian makes the case for Earth’s closest neighbor.
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European Space Agency / Hubble / NASA Want to Find Intelligent Life on Other Planets? Look for Refrigerators
Could Freon in the atmosphere of a distant planet be the thing that finally confirms humankind is not alone?
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Johannes Simon / Getty The Push to Make Pears the New Apples
A horticulturist wants a different fruit to rule America’s grocery aisles.
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Patrick H. Corkery / Lockhead Martin Juno: The Making of a Spacecraft
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Pierre Albouy / Reuters Britain’s Shaky Status as a Scientific Superpower
Researchers say the country’s decision to leave the EU will reverse decades of academic gains.
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Nicolas Pollock / The Atlantic The Quest for Purity Through Peanut Butter
Are products labeled “natural” actually superior?
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albund / shutterstock / Paul Spella / The Atlantic Is Middle America Due For a Huge Earthquake?
In the early 19th century, a series of massive quakes rocked Missouri. Some experts predict that the state could be in for another round of violent shaking, while others warn that a big quake could strike elsewhere in the center of the continent.
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Denis Balibouse / Reuters A Surprising Link Between Zika and Dengue
New research finds some dengue fever antibodies can help neutralize Zika—but they can also make Zika infections worse.
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Does Free Will Really Exist? Your Thoughts
Stephen Cave sparked a ton of reader discussion with his essay “There’s No Such Thing as Free Will,”…
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Russell Boyce / Reuters Testing Drugs on Mini-Yous, Grown in a Dish
By using “organoids,” scientists can work out how people with rare diseases will respond to new medicines.
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Russellstreet / Flickr The Contagious Cancer That Jumped Between Species
It has spread from one clam species to another, and is one of now eight transmissible tumors.
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boscorelli / Shutterstock How Quantum Mechanics Could Be Even Weirder
And what it could mean for the future of computing
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(Hillman Lab / Zuckerman Institute) The Enviably Resilient Young Brain
A novel understanding of how brains grow in response to environments
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Jim Urquhart / Reuters On the Path of Yellowstone's Elk
Tracking a herd’s movements on horseback shows how essential migration is to Wyoming’s ecosystems.
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Edgar Su / Reuters Humans: The Hyperkeystone Species
The last paper from one of the world’s greatest ecologists challenges his peers to think about humanity’s influence on the world.
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James Walton The Science of Beer Goggles
Alcohol makes people impulsive, vain, and uncharitable—and it just might help them maintain committed relationships.
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Waggonner & Ball New Orleans Learns to Love Water
A city that’s long struggled to stay dry embraces its inner swamp.
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Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP / Getty The Most Mysterious Object in the History of Technology
Multispectral scanning reveals ancient text on the fabled Antikythera Mechanism, and suggests the machine was a mechanical textbook.
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Can Magic Mushrooms Cure Addiction?
The science of how psychedelics work in the brain
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters How Climate Change Unleashed Humans Upon South America’s Megabeasts
A new study suggests that giant bears, sloths, and saber-toothed cats died because warming temperatures cocked the gun, and people pulled the trigger.
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NASA Fancy Math Can’t Make Aliens Real
An astrophysicist says extraterrestrial civilizations “almost certainly” existed at one time or another. Here’s what’s wrong with his argument.