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
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
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
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
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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
A gravitational wave and a flash of light open up a new field of astronomy.
For hundreds of millions of years, two city-sized stars — each outweighing our sun — circled one another in a fatal dance. They were neutron stars, the collapsed cores left behind after giant stars explode into supernovas. Then, 130 million years ago, the dance ended. Their collision was fast and violent, likely spawning a black hole. And a shudder — a gravitational wave — rippled across the ...read more
As Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath dumped rain on the Houston area in August, the staff at the National Weather Service (NWS) knew they were watching history. And as the rain totals were tallied, the agency added not one, but two new colors to its rainfall map: purple for 20 to 30 inches and light pink for over 30 inches. “It’s difficult to predict what has never happened,” says Greg Carbin, who leads the NWS Forecast Operations Branch in College Park, Maryland. “I hop ...read more
About 5.7 million years ago, on what’s now the Greek island of Crete, something went for a stroll.
Walking on two legs, its clawless feet left impressions. Instead of its first toe sticking out thumblike, as an ape’s would, this creature’s big toe was in line with the other four. This trait and other features preserved in the ancient prints are unique to hominins, primates more closely related to us than to apes or chimps.
And in an analysis published in August, researchers con ...read more
