Q&A
There's no gene for being human
Barbara Molz found supposedly extinct ancient gene variants in hundreds of modern humans. They don't seem to do much.
Elise Cutts
Elise Cutts is a science journalist and former geobiologist. She is the author of Reviewer, too.
Astrobiology
What do space sugars tell us about the origin of life?
The mystery of life's origin is not a missing magic ingredient, it's a missing process.
Paper Roundup
Paper Roundup November 2025: Mars lightning, language processing, and autism microbiome
This month's curated list of interesting new papers
From the Archives
Tessellation revelation
From my archives: the story of how mathematicians discovered "soft cells" that fill space without corners
Q&A
The individual isn't what it used to be
Tim Waring thinks human evolution is shifting from genetic and individual to cultural and collective
Biology
Women have no genetic blueprint
Neither do men, but women *really* don't
Paper Roundup
Paper Roundup October 2025: dark matter, emergence, and dinosaur mummies
Papers on big questions at the frontiers of science, curated by hand each month
Essays
Does biology play dice?
Some thoughts on nature, nurture, and chance in development
Q&A
Political (neural) networking
Eddie Lee mapped the political landscape underpinning the increasingly polarized US Senate using the same physics that sparked the AI boom
Opinion
True fictions
The storytelling instinct conjures illusions of consensus in science
Paper Roundup
Paper Roundup September 2025: Mars life, exploding black holes, quantum computing
Papers tackling the biggest questions in science, curated by hand each month.
There is no time telescope
The Mars that may have hosted life long ago is our neighbor in space only.