2020 was a time warp
Fourteen thousand years ago, a star called Vela died. Its core collapsed first and then, in a violent burst, propelled the shattered star’s body out into space. Vela’s death bled into the interstellar medium, blasting…
The isolation of 2020 is doing weird things to our bodies
“I am seeing tons of hair loss,” Mona Gohara says. Patients come to Gohara, a dermatologist and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, for all kinds of reasons from skin cancer screenings to cosmetic…
You can survive winter and not spread Covid-19. Here’s how.
Winter and the holidays can be hard even in typical years: short days, cold winds, and family stress, to name a few. But the ongoing US Covid-19 surge, with more than 200,000 new virus cases…
Mountain gorillas are distancing, too — from humans
There are around 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the wild, and about 460 of them live in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. In the park’s very dense, high-altitude forest (hence the name “impenetrable”), veterinarian…
Hospital ICUs are filling up. It’s even worse than it sounds.
As of mid-December, hospitals on average had just 22 percent of their intensive care unit (ICU) beds available across the country, and many were completely full. As the Covid-19 surge continues to intensify, lack of…
I was always terrified of wasting time. A cancer diagnosis made me reconsider.
The room didn’t spin like they say it does. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I had no difficulty understanding the verdict: It was incurable. They could offer no prognosis. They had some general…
How we can encourage people to wear masks — for others’ sake
Governors, mayors, and public health officials are sounding the alarm about rising levels of Covid-19 across every part of the country. The disease is surging, the death toll is soaring, and it’s clear that some…
The 4 major unknowns of how vaccines will affect the Covid-19 pandemic
Two highly effective Covid-19 vaccines are now being administered across the United States, and more are in the pipeline. Almost 2 million people have already received the first of two doses of these vaccines, and…
In 2020, scientists documented hundreds of new species. Here are a few.
It’s the year 2020, and scientists are still discovering new species of life on Earth. No one knows exactly how many types of life are yet undescribed in the scientific literature; estimates range from around…
The worst idea of 2020
It’s year-end-list season. Usually, the Vox science team has some fun and compiles a year-end list of bad ideas in health and science that ought to die with the end of the year. In the…