A half-kilogram’s worth of samples gathered by NASA’s Perseverance rover for eventual return to Earth holds weighty implications for life on Mars

Some countries have used up far more of the world’s carbon budget—the amount we can emit and still avoid more extreme climate disruption—than others

With millions of people affected and at least $1 trillion of economic value at stake, long COVID is our next national health emergency

The hunt for dark matter is in crisis, and it’s time for radical new ideas to explain our universe

A new review finds that only some methods to counteract conspiracy beliefs are effective. Here’s what works and what doesn’t

A new index that rates 70,000 U.S. communities on their climate vulnerability finds that parts of the Gulf Coast subject to flooding and economic and racial inequities are most under threat

A way of life nurtured for hundreds of years in the U.S. Southeast guards coastlines from climate change

Mathematician Abba Gumel uses calculations and models to prepare for future disease outbreaks

Do efforts to create life—by cooking up imitations in computers, robots and molecules—point toward a universal definition of biology?

Bird flu outbreaks are a numbers game, and the numbers are turning against us

A young psychoanalyst specializing in sexual issues starts getting calls for help—about something else entirely

Evidence that ancient glaciers retreated more than a quarter-mile a day is a worrisome sign that glaciers today could melt—and contribute to sea-level rise—faster than was thought

The real-life fungi that inspired TheLast of Us hijack the bodies of ants, wasps, cicadas, and more.

A small, bizarre-looking fish was found more than five miles beneath the sea and is considered the deepest fish ever recorded

Moves in Florida to control public education mirror past fascist strategies in ways that are disquieting for American democracy, a historian argues

The imagery offers a rare view of the ice giant’s ring system, bright moons and dynamic atmosphere

The greenhouse gas intensity of offshore oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico could be twice as much as government estimates

Ancient Maya cities in laser focus, chickens gone wild in Singapore, high-tech drug research in the U.S., and much more in this month’s Quick Hits

These two researchers journey toward the center of Earth—via windows to the crust—to find bacteria that can breathe iron, arsenic and other metals that would kill us pretty quickly.

Math is called the “universal language,” but a unique dialect is being reborn