Bruce the Kea parrot is missing the upper half of his beak, but he has turned this disability into a weapon to keep subordinates in line
The strange way cocaine water pollution is changing salmon
It turns out that salmon exposed to cocaine through water pollution do a lot of swimming—which may not be a good thing
Magnetic muon measurements and gene-therapy advances win $3 million Breakthrough prizes
This year’s winners include hundreds of physicists across more than 30 institutions
Ancient Roman ‘machine-gun’ damage discovered on Pompeii walls
Recently uncovered damage to walls in Pompeii displays patterns that may have been made by an ancient “machine gun” called a polybolos
See the spectacular Lyrid meteor shower at its peak
The Lyrid meteor shower hits its peak from April 21 to April 22. Here’s everything you need to know about this annual celestial light show
‘Cocaine hippos’ raise tough questions, and scientists uncover insights on faster aging and heart risks
“Cocaine hippos,” underground bees, and fresh insights into aging and heart health
Why game theory could be critical in a nuclear war
Military strategists use game theory to evaluate possible strategies—but there are limits to what this approach to decision-making can achieve
How a Renaissance gambling dispute spawned probability theory
A dispute over how to divvy up the pot in an interrupted game of chance led early mathematicians to invent modern risk assessment
Master of chaos wins $3M math prize for ‘blowing up’ equations
For decades, the mathematician Frank Merle has been embracing the messy math behind lasers and fluids
The science behind the peptide craze
The world of peptides has exploded in wellness circles, but the benefits of injecting these gray-market molecules rest on little clinical evidence