Stories by Joanna Thompson

Cultured meat, grown from real animal cells, will soon be available in restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The cold and mysterious Oort cloud at the edge of our solar system may be hiding a rogue planet

Politically polarized Google users are not steered to partisan sites by the search engine’s algorithm but generally decide to go there on their own

The evolution of terrestrial plant roots could have kicked off large-scale extinctions by throwing the planet’s mineral cycle into disarray

Futuristic food science technology could finally bring plant-based salmon filets and tuna steaks to the table

In 2015 the moon’s wobble and an El Niño teamed up to kill off tens of millions of Australian mangroves

Tiny subterranean cracks can upend aquifer microbes’ ecology

Scientists and medical experts weigh in on how to recognize the signs of heat-related illness and avoid the worst health impacts from increasingly intense heat waves

Sea angels, telescope fish and blanket octopuses can be real monsters

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These little-studied mini twisters form beautiful loops under the water’s surface

Boa constrictors wearing blood pressure cuffs and tiny masks reveal the answer to a biological puzzle

The LEGEND-200 detector could help explain why matter dominates the known universe

Salivary glands make unexpected use of tiny ionocytes, essential to frogs and fish

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The weirdest subatomic particles require enormous equipment to study

The first known male appendage from trilobites has been found in a 508-million-year-old fossil

We now know that plants survive but fail to thrive in lunar soil

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NASA’s three-and-a-half-year mission to collect seismic data from Mars is running out of juice

Once considered practically unseeable, a phenomenon called the Unruh effect might soon be revealed in laboratory experiments

Genome-wide association studies can sleuth out genetic markers that raise or lower COVID risk, but they miss social factors

There’s a structural reason your sponge hosts so many microbes

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