Why Horseshoe Crab Blood Is Blue — and How It Changed Modern Medicine
Few animals have contributed to modern medicine in a way quite as improbable as the horseshoe crab. It looks prehistoric beca...
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Why Do Email Addresses Use the @ Symbol? The Story of Ray Tomlinson’s Brilliant Choice
Every email address contains a tiny piece of computing history. Between a person's name and the domain sits a character that...
Namibia’s Fairy Circles: Termites, Thirsty Grass or Both?
From the air, parts of the Namib Desert look as if someone has stamped an enormous sheet of polka dots across the landscape. Thousands upon thousands of roughly circular...
The Voynich Manuscript: Why Nobody Has Been Able to Read the World’s Most Mysterious Book
Open the Voynich Manuscript and almost everything about it looks tantalizingly close to comprehension. Lines of neat handwriting run from left to right. Words are separat...
Do Plants Really “Scream” When They’re Thirsty? The Science of Ultrasonic Plant Sounds
A thirsty tomato plant can be surprisingly noisy. Not to us: stand beside it in a greenhouse and you will probably hear nothing beyond leaves rustling and the ordinary so...
Surtsey: The Icelandic Island Where Scientists Watched Life Begin From Scratch
On the morning of November 14, 1963, sailors south of Iceland saw something that looked at first like a ship on fire. A dark column was rising from the North Atlantic. It...