Image in Creative Commons. For roughly a century and a half, book No. 506 sat beyond the reach of every librarian who might have wanted it back — inside a tea crate, sealed behind the bricks of a ...

When the Strait of Hormuz first closed at the start of the 2026 Iran war, the world braced for the “largest energy crisis in history.” Before the conflict began, almost 20 percent of the world’s ...

The two bird carvings are remarkably intricate. One crouches as though warming a clutch of eggs, while the other spreads its wings. Together, the two figures weigh just two grams — and spent roughly ...

The world is running out of sand. About 50 billion tons of sand and gravel are extracted annually, most of which is used for construction activities. This is a problem for two reasons. First of all, ...

Among the ruins of ancient cities scattered across northeastern Spain, archaeologists have uncovered a grisly yet fascinating relic of the past: severed human skulls, pierced with iron nails, ...

Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist, covering climate change, energy, and natural disasters. He is the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. He is ...

In what has become a landmark comparison of sports and life expectancy, researchers from the Copenhagen City Heart Study found that playing tennis may add nearly a decade (9.7 years) to one’s lifespan ...

This is the first evidence that the mineral garnet may have been formed within the crust of Mars itself, heralding ...

Cannabis did not evolve THC with a single, elegant molecular stroke. Instead, the plant appears to have stumbled toward it by “experimenting” chemically, copying useful genes, and slowly refining a ...

Long-term records documenting the colors of penguin guano shed light on how declining sea ice may be affecting penguin diets.

Donald Trump has been described as a strongman, a showman and a political wrecking ball, descriptions which both supporters ...

Bruce McCandless II floating untethered. Image credits: NASA. On February 7, 1984, Bruce McCandless II slipped out of space shuttle Challenger and became something no human had ever been before: a ...