For generations, medicine treated death as a clean line: the instant the heart stops, the person is gone. A wave of new research is dismantling that certainty, revealing a messy, lingering borderland ...

Death and the possibility of an afterlife have fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists throughout history. Fear, hope, dread… these are all things we might feel when we ponder what happens to ...

People’s knee-jerk reaction to seeing death in nature is often not positive. The burn scar left by wildfire on a once-forested hillside, or a ghostly white coral reef, may evoke tragedy and despair.