The seed for Eben Bayer’s big idea — an idea that would eventually put him on the Forbes “30 Under 30 list” — was planted when he was just a kid growing up on a small farm in South Royalton, Vermont.Every spring, he would shovel wood chips onto the conveyor belt of a 20-foot evaporator that turned sap into maple syrup. But sometimes large, white, damp clumps would turn up in the wood chips and jam up the operation. The clumps were mycelium, the root-like threads of fungi that grow unde ...read more

Prehistoric men hunted; prehistoric women gathered. At least this is the standard narrative written by and about men to the exclusion of women.The idea of “Man the Hunter” runs deep within anthropology, convincing people that hunting made us human, only men did the hunting, and therefore evolutionary forces must only have acted upon men. Such depictions are found not only in media, but in museums and introductory anthropology textbooks, too.A common argument is that a sexual division of la ...read more

NASA’s recently launched asteroid hunter, Psyche, is designed to give us a look at a body that could resemble depths far within the Earth, where we can never go. But one instrument tagging along for a ride is exciting scientists who specialize in a completely different field — that of space communications. Since the dawn of the Space Age, they have depended on radio waves, just a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. But scientists hope to soon expand into another part of the spectrum. Th ...read more

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been sending images of the Red Planet home since 2006. In that time, it sent back spectacular photos of various rovers crawling across the surface, the Mars Phoenix lander parachuting towards the surface and numerous images of curious surface features that planetary geologists are keen to explain.The spacecraft’s main camera, the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), is capable of producing images with a resolution of 30 centimeters per pixel. ...read more

It’s been nearly three decades since Bill Nye the Science Guy first aired on PBS in September of 1993. In the years that followed, Nye, a former mechanical engineer and the show’s titular host, would become America’s most well-loved science teacher, educating millions of children (and plenty of adults) about basic scientific principles like biodiversity and the forces of gravity.In a recent interview with Discover, Nye reflects on more than just the series that made him famous, sharing tho ...read more

This story was originally published in our Sept/Oct 2023 issue as "Sherlock of Sleep." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.The elderly man woke up one night to find himself in a bed soaked with blood. His wife, lying next to him, was dead, stabbed with a letter opener.The man was charged with murder, though he claimed to have no memory of what had happened. The defense attorney was stumped, because there was no plausible motive for his client to have killed his wife.The ...read more

In the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and California, at least 79,000 metric tons of plastic has coalesced to create the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The patch, kept together by ocean currents and spanning an area of roughly 1.6 million square kilometers — about twice the size of Texas — is one of the most incriminating examples of human pollution on the planet. It’s also a huge hazard for marine life, killing up to 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year via ingestion ...read more

When it comes to enjoying a glass of wine or a pint of beer, not everyone can partake without consequence. After consuming alcohol, some individuals find themselves facing sudden and often uncomfortable reactions, such as facial flushing and stuffy noses. This leads to the question: Can you be allergic to alcohol?In this article, we’ll briefly dive into the basics of alcohol intolerance, its symptoms, the diseases that may cause it, and how to test for this condition.What Is Alcohol Intoleranc ...read more

For immune health, some influencers seem to think the Goldilocks philosophy of “just right” is overrated. Why settle for less immunity when you can have more? Many social media posts push supplements and other life hacks that “boost your immune system” to keep you healthy and fend off illness.However, these claims are not based on science and what is known about immune function. Healthy immune systems don’t need to be “boosted.” Instead, the immune system works best when it is per ...read more

It’s a tired trope in movies and cartoons: The characters are wandering in the desert, desperate for water, when up ahead, they see an oasis. Water at last! (In cartoons, the water is often surrounded by swaying palm trees and deck chairs.) But alas, there is no oasis — no water at all, not even a small pool. It was just a mirage. We even use ‘mirage’ as a metaphor: I imagined us together for the rest of our lives, but that future was just a mirage. But what are mirages when you get th ...read more