These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.

The Mystery of Mercury’s Missing Meteorites

And how we may have finally found some.
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran sits and talks with American president John F. Kennedy, 1963

The Shah, Our Man in Tehran?

Playing up the threat of the communist incursions, the Shah of Iran gained more and more support—financial and political—from the United States.
stone wheel in a cave

How Was the Wheel Invented?

Computer simulations reveal the unlikely birth of a world-changing technology nearly 6,000 years ago.

Juneberry: A Summer Sweet for People, Pollinators, and Birds

For millennia, Indigenous peoples in North America derived sustenance from the juneberry, known also as the misâskwatômin, serviceberry, shadbush, or saskatoon.
Emil Nolde, Red Clouds, watercolour on handmade paper, 34.5 x 44.7 cm.

How a Postwar German Literary Classic Helped Eclipse Painter Emil Nolde’s Relationship to Nazism

While Nolde was one of the many victims of the Third Reich’s repressive responses to “degenerate art,” he was also one of Nazism’s great admirers.
These fossilized foraminiferan shells, dating back 35 to 45 million years, were found in Tanzania. They all belong to species that are now extinct. The largest are about half a millimeter in diameter.

The History of the Ocean, as Told by Tiny Beautiful Fossils

Bountiful remains of foraminifera reveal how organisms responded to climate disturbances of the past. They can help predict the future, too.
A man scrambles up a gully on the Crestone Needle in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado.

How Science Might Help Keep Wild Places Wild

Recreation researchers are studying how to minimize human impact on public lands while maximizing accessibility.
Fruit of the pong-pong tree (Cerbera odollam)

Cerbera odollam: “The Suicide Tree” That Harms and Heals

Even before The White Lotus, people feared the poisonous pong-pong tree, Cerbera odollam. But there's another way to look at the plant and its effects.