Detective Fiction Has Nothing on This Victorian-Science Murder Mystery
William Saville-Kent was a pioneering coral photographer. Was he also hiding a grisly secret?
Science
A Hint About How Life Made It Onto Land
Our fishy ancestors might have gotten a cognitive boost just by leaving the water.
Why America Doesn’t Really Make Solar Panels Anymore
America invented silicon solar cells in the 1950s. It spent more on solar R&D than any other country in the 1980s. It lost its technological advantage anyway.
A Strangely Comforting Finding About Alien Rain
Whether they’re made of iron or quartz, raindrops on other worlds are about the same size as those on Earth.
Hallucinogenic Toads Are Too Popular for Their Own Good
A trendy drug comes at a high environmental cost.
Two Arctic Fish Are Breaking the Rules of Genetics
“I’m still very much puzzled about how this is possible."
The Essential Ed Yong Reading List
A staff writer for The Atlantic since 2015, Yong is the recipient of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.
The Human Genome Is—Finally!—Complete
The Human Genome Project left 8 percent of our DNA unexplored. Now, for the first time, those enigmatic regions have been revealed.
A Pivotal Mosquito Experiment Could Not Have Gone Better
An extremely common microbe can stop the insects from spreading the virus that causes dengue fever.
The IVF Cases That Broke Birthright Citizenship
The U.S. had to rethink its definition of parenthood, to account for children born abroad to American parents using egg and sperm donors or surrogates.