The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more

The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more

The Saturn probe completes its years-long mission in a fiery descent. In October 1997, a Titan rocket streaked across the sky and shot a spacecraft called Cassini toward Saturn. The road trip, minus roads, was long, and Cassini didn’t arrive until 2004. But it stayed there till its mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017 — with a bang, and a good deal of whimpering from Earth. Early that morning, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent Cassini down to meet the planet it ...read more

Researchers in a U.S. lab finally test the revolutionary gene-editing tool in human embryos. In just a few short years, the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 has infiltrated biology labs around the world. This summer, scientists working in a U.S. lab announced they’d used CRISPR to modify viable human embryos, which were kept alive just a few days. The research is a first in the United States, though scientists in China have conducted similar experiments. This latest effort, led by resear ...read more

Our ancestors’ origin story is being refined. For decades, schoolchildren across the globe were taught our origin story went something like this: An archaic form of Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa. By about 100,000 years ago, the population had become anatomically modern humans who, around 50,000 years ago, headed across Eurasia and met up with our distant cousins the Neanderthals (and the closely related Denisovans, not known to science until 2010). Like a gam ...read more

The solar event that transfixed Americans from sea to shining sea. Two things were inescapable this summer: the Latin single “Despacito,” and the looming eclipse. The first total solar eclipse in the continental United States since 1979, it was also a uniquely American event, with no other countries getting a peek at totality, and at least a partial eclipse visible in all 50 states. As the moon’s shadow crisscrossed the country on Aug. 21, about 154 million American adults ...read more

The FDA approves a powerful gene therapy to fight a resistant cancer. Immunotherapy, the hottest field in cancer research, seeks to supercharge the body’s natural defenses against deadly tumors. Two different approaches are driving the buzz, and one of them got a big boost in August when the Food and Drug Administration approved a “living drug” to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in children and young adults who’ve stopped responding to chemotherapy. The prod ...read more

(Credit: g-stockstudio/Shutterstock) Lose some sleep over the weekend, and you’re likely to come into work Monday feeling a little off. Whether that’s zoning out in a meeting, missing typos in an email or something more dangerous like drifting off at the wheel, sleep deprivation blunts our cognitive abilities. But it’s not a level playing field. Some people turn into zombies if they don’t get their eight hours, and others get by on just five or six hours a night. Expert ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) Michael Bisping has fought professionally in mixed martial arts since 2004. Last year, the journeyman won his first title. He knocked out Luke Rockhold in the first round to win the middleweight belt in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, the most popular of several MMA organizations. On Nov. 4 of this year, at age 38, Bisping defended his title for a second time. His opponent was the Canadian Georges St. Pierre, a former UFC champ. The fight, held in New York&rs ...read more