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 patches of bare ground interrupt the grassland, often with a taller fr...
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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 sounds of the room. Bu...
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A sleeping octopus can look almost ghostly. Its body lies still, its eyes close and its skin may fade toward a pale, uniform color. Then, without waking, the animal seems to erupt into activ...
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Imagine taking the mass of a mountain and compressing it until its boundary is smaller than an atom. There would be no miniature rocky mountain inside, no visible sphere and certainly nothin...
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Few wildlife events are as disturbing as a whale stranding. An animal exquisitely adapted to life in deep water suddenly lies helpless on a beach, sometimes alone and sometimes alongside doz...
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Imagine two identical buildings on the same street. One has a broken window that is repaired the next morning. The other has a broken window that remains shattered for weeks. Graffiti appear...
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Few sights make the Moon seem more theatrical than an early-autumn moonrise. A huge amber disk appears behind trees, rooftops or distant hills, looking far larger than the Moon we see later...
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For many Americans, Labor Day means a three-day weekend, backyard cookouts, crowded beaches, college football and the unofficial end of summer. Retailers turn it into a sales event, swimming...
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When a tropical system appears in the Atlantic, the urge to watch it move across a map can become almost compulsive. A disturbance off Africa becomes a colored area on an outlook. A few days...
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A mosquito bite is usually an itchy annoyance that disappears within a few days. During summer and early autumn in the United States, however, one particular mosquito-borne infection repeate...
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