Science

Editor’s note: This story contains light spoilers for Project Hail Mary.I have long puzzled over something in Andy Weir’s 2021 book Project Hail Mary: Why did two of the three fictional astronauts die during an interstellar trip? It might be...

The Antarctic Peninsula is an early warning system for the southernmost continent when it comes to climate change. And the prognostications are grim — but it’s not yet too late to avoid irreversible changes, researchers report February 20 in...

New kinds of aircraft taking to the skies could mean unfamiliar sounds overhead — and where you’re hearing them might matter, according to new NASA research. NASA aeronautics has worked for years to enable new air transportation options for people...

Making high-performance proteins for medicines or consumer products can take trial after trial of tweaks, experiments and fine-tuning. A new machine learning framework squeezes all that into a single round of testing.The technique, called MULTI-evolve, predicts how proteins will...

Imagine trying to photograph wind. That’s similar to what NASA engineers dealt with during a recent effort to study how air moves around planes, rockets, and other kinds of aerospace vehicles. Air is invisible, but our understanding of how...

These days, many people can skip the dreaded Pap smear in favor of a far less invasive and more private way to screen for cervical cancer: disposable, DIY swabs that can be used to test for high-risk variants of...

Many people find their flattened faces cute, but among dogs bred with a squished visage, 11 percent or less of some breeds can breathe easily.The findings, published February 18 in PLOS One, evaluate a major health cost of breeding...

In the vast tapestry of the universe, most galaxies shine brightly across cosmic time and space. Yet a rare class of galaxies remains nearly invisible — low-surface-brightness galaxies dominated by dark matter and containing only a sparse scattering of...

Snakes would do great on Survivor. These animals can last weeks — even months — without food. A couple of recently discovered genetic changes may help.Certain snakes and some other reptiles lack the gene encoding ghrelin, commonly known as...

Spend some time staring at the famous painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware," and you can't miss the ice. It's everywhere. Cold weather became part of Washington's military strategy, says Alex Robb, an educator at Washington...