The curious case of the ancient whale bones
Every year, thousands of whales strand — meaning that they wind up trapped on beaches or in shallow waters — and it’s really hard to figure out why. It’s not for lack of trying. Teams…
Streaming space tourism is the new reality TV
When SpaceX launches its first all-civilian crew into space later this fall and takes a multi-day trip circling the Earth, humanity can follow along online thanks to an exclusive documentary deal Netflix sealed with Elon…
The case against the concept of biodiversity
In 2017, an evolutionary biologist named R. Alexander Pyron ignited controversy with a Washington Post commentary titled “We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.” He wrote: “Conserving a species we…
What it feels like to get Covid-19 after being vaccinated
Michael Miranda had been fully vaccinated for over four months when he tested positive for the coronavirus. “I stared at my phone for a few moments, wondering if this was a death sentence,” said Miranda,…
Climate change worsens extreme weather. A revolution in attribution science proved it.
There’s a cliché that has popped up for years in discussions of climate and weather disasters: You can’t blame any individual event on climate change. Climate is all about trends and statistics, the reasoning goes,…
We have to accept some risk of Covid-19
There’s a growing consensus among health experts: Covid-19 may never go away. We’ll likely always have some coronavirus out there, infecting people and, hopefully only in rare cases, getting them seriously ill. The realistic goal…
Why it’s so hard to be a nurse in America, according to two nurses
Last month, at the start of a fourth Covid-19 wave in the US, a nurse in a Seattle-area intensive-care unit announced her resignation on Twitter. “No amount of money could convince me to stay on…
Solar farms are often bad for biodiversity — but they don’t have to be
Every several years — sometimes just once a decade — when the rains come in just the right amounts and at just the right times, rare flowers speckle the Mojave Desert in California. Some, like…
How a cheap antidepressant emerged as a promising Covid-19 treatment
Since Covid-19 patients started showing up at clinics and hospitals a year and a half ago, doctors and researchers have been hard at work trying to figure out how to treat them. Most drugs and…
What full FDA approval for Covid-19 vaccines really means
Nearly nine months after the first Americans received their shots, the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration for people 16 and older on Monday. This could help increase…