How the microbes that make us sick also helped us evolve

How Influencers and Algorithms Are Creating Bespoke Realities for Everyone

Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next

The dangers of sneezing—from ejected bowels to torn windpipes

A new blue: Mysterious origin of the ribbontail ray’s electric blue spots revealed

How We Solved the Hole in the Ozone

Why Ernest Hemingway’s Younger Brother Established a Floating Republic in the Caribbean

We’re off for US Independence Day, but here is our explore page in case you need a fix

Oldest known picture story is a 51,000-year-old Indonesian cave painting

Ways to interact with virtual versions of our deceased loved ones are now a possibility – but there’s a raft of ethical and emotional challenges involved

Boa constrictor gives birth to 14 baby snakes after living alone for nearly a decade

China targets its first planetary defense test mission

‘Almost whole island homeless’ in Hurricane Beryl’s wake

Lo Manh Hung: The Story of South Vietnam’s Youngest Photo Journalist, 1968

The Fake Oilman

Watch This Pilot Land Her Plane After the Glass Canopy Opens and Shatters Mid-Flight

Two of the German military’s new spy satellites appear to have failed in orbit

Even a happy adoption is founded on an unstable sense of self

The fight against light pollution

Why GPS Is Under Attack

Who Stashed $2 Million of Civil War Gold in a Kentucky Cornfield?

Play shown for first time since 1671 controversy

Treasure hunters: the enthralling, emotional inside story of a house clearance

A bizarre video of eyeballs confirms our pupils shrink with age

NASA reveals origins of bizarre ‘furry UFO’ that mysteriously slammed into luxury North Carolina mountaintop resort

How Researchers Solved the Mystery of This 2,000-Year-Old Shipwreck

Video: What should an electric car sound like? [5:17]

Flirting with disaster: When endangered wild animals try to mate with domestic relatives, both wildlife and people lose

Study reveals fireworks’ impact on air quality

How a musical indie game went against the grain to explore the Deaf experience

Big Brother of the Brain Is Here

NASA Asteroid Experts Create Hypothetical Impact Scenario for Exercise

Scientists crack new method for high-capacity, secure quantum communication

From China to the Mediterranean and More, Here’s How Different Cultures Envision Dragons

Bussana Vecchia: The battle over Italy’s eclectic, handbuilt village

Exploring the Ancient History of the Olympics

The Caribbean has a defense system against deadly hurricanes — but it’s vanishing

Alaska glaciers may hit irreversible melting point sooner than expected, study finds

The fossil finder: one man’s lifelong search for fragments of Britain’s Jurassic past

The Unexpected Music of a Coral Reef

A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots

The Life and Untimely Death of a Boeing Whistleblower

The forgotten priest who predicted black holes

Video: The Numitron: An obvious idea that wasn’t very bright [23:20]

Why Is Chile So Long?

‘New York weirdness’: why did a mysterious bell ring in a subway station for weeks?

Love and other negotiations in the time of the non-disclosure agreement.

Food Companies Intentionally Make Their Products Addictive — And It’s Making Us Sick

To Be Continued

Nanorobots kill cancer cells in mice

Mysterious Swirls on the Moon Could Be Explained by Underground Magma

How was popcorn discovered? An archaeologist on its likely appeal for people in the Americas millennia ago

Ants perform limb amputations on injured comrades to save their lives

Yes, you should be a little freaked out about Hurricane Beryl

Groundbreaking Discovery: How Zinc Could Change Farming Forever

On this day in 1881 a deranged man shot US President James Garfield

The evidence is mounting: Humans were responsible for the extinction of large mammals

How archives can make – or break – a philosopher’s reputation

An Arizona museum tells the stories of ancient animals through their fossilized poop

Fifty years on, how Lucy, the mother of humanity, changed our understanding of evolution