A Quite Possibly Wonderful Summer
Families will gather. Restaurants will reopen. People will travel. The pandemic may feel like it’s behind us—even if it’s not.
Scientists Really, Really Want a Piece of Mars
A new NASA rover has jump-started an intense effort to finally bring home a pristine sample from the red planet.
Delay a Shot? Skip One? Vaccine-Dosing Messaging Is a Nightmare.
Vaccine regimens need both science and public trust to succeed.
The Weekly Planet: The Big Idea From Bill Gates’s New Climate Book
Call it the “Gates Rule.”
Life Is Tough for Teenage Parasites
For a deep-sea parasitic worm, the epic journey to adulthood starts in a fish’s intestines.
Coastal Darkening Is a Hidden Environmental Nuisance
Murky water poses a growing threat to all sorts of marine life.
An Ever-Moving, Unloved Fish Is Stirring Chaos in the North Atlantic
When mackerel started showing up in Iceland, it started a decade-long fight over how to divide the ocean’s riches.
The Body Is Far From Helpless Against Coronavirus Variants
The virus is evolving, but the antibodies that fight it can change, too.
The Pandemic’s Deadly Winter Surge Is Rapidly Easing
Cases are down 57 percent from the country’s all-time peak in early January, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Leave Your Antibodies Alone
Antibody tests can determine whether your immune system has seen the coronavirus before—and not much else.
The Weekly Planet: Hail! It’s America’s Most Underrated Climate Risk
It’s smashing, in the bad way.
What If We Never Reach Herd Immunity?
Hitting the threshold might actually be impossible. But vaccines can still help end the pandemic.
‘It Seems That I Know How the Universe Originated’
The theoretical physicist Andrei Linde may have the world’s most expansive conception of what infinity looks like.
Humanity Is Flushing Away One of Life’s Essential Elements
We broke phosphorus.
A Super Bowl Ad That the Biden Presidency Made Possible
GM has cast its electric vehicles as normal American cars, in a normal Super Bowl ad. Here are seven ways to think about that.
Mars Doesn’t Look So Dead After All
New discoveries have raised the possibility that the planet’s volcanoes, long assumed dormant, may still be active.
The Pandemic Broke the Flu
This winter has been an extraordinarily quiet flu season. Scientists aren’t sure the silence will last.
Fewer Americans Are Getting COVID-19 Tests
Our best coronavirus tracking tool is still underused.
America’s New Vision of Astronauts
Once, American astronauts were white men with buzz cuts. Now they’re billionaires and a few lucky normal people.
The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record
Our climate models could be missing something big.