What happens when the skies are no longer dark at night? Writer Craig Childs biked from the brightest night sky, to the darkest, to find out what we lose when the lights don’t go out....

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has become the third-largest on record. And while the regional response is more robust than it was during the...

Gut feelings, trusting your gut, butterflies: We have lots of expressions about how our brains and our bowels are intertwined. But how well do we understand the science of this on the...

The band Phish has toured for over 40 years. One of the draws of their legendary live shows—which can go on for 8 hours—is finding moments of “flow,” when the band members lock into a...

Americans pay roughly three times as much for prescription meds as people in other wealthy nations. But why? Tahir Amin argues it’s largely to do with how our patent systems work. He’...

If you hear “colonial America” and “science,” one name probably comes to mind: Benjamin Franklin. But he wasn’t the only one thinking big thoughts and asking big questions. Many other...

Researchers have engineered an artificial cell out of chemicals and biomolecules that, at a basic level, can eat, grow, duplicate its own genetic code, and reproduce itself. The cell,...

Imagine this: You’re an astronaut, you’ve landed on the moon, and as you’re taking one small step for mankind, you kick up a bunch of lunar dirt. Now, tiny, jagged particles of dust a...

Around 25 years ago, Ardem Patapoutian set out to investigate the fundamental biology behind our sense of touch. Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a class of s...