Science

The organic compounds that enabled industrialization are having unintended consequences for the planet’s life.

The 1957 launch of Sputnik wasn’t necessarily the start of the US-Soviet space race that Americans think of today.

How the U.S. military handled a shortage of prosthetic eyes for injured soldiers.

An epic natural disaster restored the forest of an earlier America.

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

Our circumstances have changed a lot since early colonial times. Unfortunately, our thinking about climate hasn’t changed enough.

Can the history of hurricanes prove the existence of climate change?

A history of every Atlantic storm tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 1987.

For decades, only female names were used.

Life expectancy doubled in the past 150 years. Here’s why.

Based on a century's worth of NOAA data.

It turns out that deforestation and suburbanization – not evolution – are to blame for the tick-borne epidemic.

Rural Americans once led the fight to link extreme weather like Hurricane Harvey and human activity. What changed?

Blame messy history for the gender imbalance bedeviling Silicon Valley.

The darkness of the eclipse lit up American minds more than a century ago.

With the rise of spit-in-a-cup genetic testing, white nationalists are turning to science to "prove" their racial identity.

Cooling the air was once seen as sinful. Maybe the idea wasn’t entirely wrong.

Reconsidering the journalistic ethics of a New York Times reporter who chronicled the Manhattan Project from the inside.

Eclipse madness is real.

How Americans got so weird about science.

Pre-Columbian bodies are once again being used as evidence for extraterrestrial life.

How does one talk about cancer, something so unpleasant that is almost always linked with death, and where do metaphors come in?

As we face down the threat of climate change, it’s worth considering how fear of nuclear war has spurred humanity into action.

When did the practice of weighing newborns begin? And why?

Instead of playing on emotions, we need to destigmatize addiction.

Despite its persistence in popular culture, extraterrestrial life owes more to the imagination than reality.

New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.

A huge expansion of the population of New Orleans created the perfect environment for the spread of yellow fever, and recent immigrants suffered most.

How Malcolm McClean's shipping containers conquered the global economy by land and sea.

An exclusive excerpt from "The One Device" about the engineering fight that created the iPhone as you know it.