Lifelike biochemistry continued to unfold in sterilized soil for six years, pointing to a metabolic theory for how biology began. For 15 years, Sébastien Fontaine has been trying to kill dirt. The ...

The sun is one of the most studied objects in the history of science. The ancient Babylonians and Chinese tracked sunspots and solar eclipses, etching their observations into clay tablets; these ...

Earth’s largest volcanic system, hidden in mountain chains under the sea, has long been assumed to erupt only quietly. The ...

Evolutionary biologists are uncovering genomic mechanisms that allow populations to adapt quickly to different, hyperlocal ...

By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin Clausen are taking the first step in a far ...

Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he’s known for his unusual life, if he’s known at all. But what ...

At 25, Kurt Gödel proved there can never be a mathematical “theory of everything.” Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores the implications. In 1931, by turning logic on itself, Kurt Gödel proved a pair ...

In the summer of 1991, Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, self-destructed. The eruption started on June 12, and three days later it culminated in a tremendous explosion. By the time pyroclastic ...

When an optometrist shines a bright light into your eyes, a vast, branching tree sprouts in your field of vision. This is the shadow of blood vessels. Though we normally can’t perceive them, these ...

Before he changed the way we understand lightning on Earth, Joseph Dwyer studied the weather in more cosmic settings. Using the sensors on NASA’s Wind satellite, orbiting a million miles away, he ...