History

A Trump administration plan would end the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where similar oversight muzzling has led to nuclear disasters overseas

A Chinese medical textbook published in 1511 led to a novel about an all-but-forgotten female doctor who practiced during the Ming Dynasty

Color blindness; the end of fire

Valentine’s Day often focuses on romance, but deep friendships deserve love, too. Here’s why they matter.

Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road isn’t just a sculpture—it’s a monument to the tech world’s obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

A geographer explains how maps’ place names, such as the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, are decided

A century after the Scopes trial, hopeful prospects beckon for teaching the unifying principle of the biological sciences in the U.S.’s classrooms

Ant talk; vegetation on Mars

The centennial of the discovery of brain waves in humans exposes a chilling tale involving Nazis, war between Russia and Ukraine, suicide and the vicissitudes of history

The J particle; a nitroglycerin engine

This is a science adventure story. Take a wild journey down the Colorado River in the company of two pioneering botanists: Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter.

A finger-sized clay cylinder from a tomb in northern Syria appears to be the oldest example of writing using an alphabet rather than hieroglyphs or cuneiform