Archive

Promising efforts at disentangling the effects of genes and the environment on complicated traits may have been confounded by statistical problems.

The rainbow of pigments that animals use for blood illustrates a central truth of evolution.

Jim Gunn shaped the theory of the evolution of the cosmos before building cameras and spectrographs for major observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope.

Solve a linguistic whodunit about a college mascot by thinking like a self-referencing computer subroutine.

In harsh ecosystems around the world, microbiologists are finding evidence that “microbial seed banks” protect biodiversity from changing conditions.

Researchers are beginning to understand the ways in which viruses strategically manipulate and cooperate with one another.

By chopping up large numbers into smaller ones, researchers have rewritten a fundamental mathematical speed limit.

The astrophysicist Janna Levin reflects on the newly unveiled, first-ever photograph of a black hole.

New studies revise ideas about the symbiosis that gave mitochondria to cells and about whether the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes was one cell or many.