For the first time in 800 years, you can watch a “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn
Jupiter and Saturn are due to converge in their orbits on Monday, appearing as a double planet in the night sky — the first such occurrence in almost 800 years. The two planets have been near one another throughout the…
How to be alone
Many of us dread being alone. We find isolation uncomfortable or downright scary. If you want to know just how eager we are to avoid it, consider a scientific study that offered people a choice between giving themselves electric shocks…
2020 was a time warp
Fourteen thousand years ago, a star called Vela died. Its core collapsed first and then, in a violent burst, propelled the shattered star’s body out into space. Vela’s death bled into the interstellar medium, blasting cosmic radiation out in every…
You can survive winter and not spread Covid-19. Here’s how.
Winter and the holidays can be hard even in typical years: short days, cold winds, and family stress, to name a few. But the ongoing US Covid-19 surge, with more than 200,000 new virus cases reported every day since December…
The isolation of 2020 is doing weird things to our bodies
“I am seeing tons of hair loss,” Mona Gohara says. Patients come to Gohara, a dermatologist and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, for all kinds of reasons from skin cancer screenings to cosmetic procedures. But this year more…
Mountain gorillas are distancing, too — from humans
There are around 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the wild, and about 460 of them live in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. In the park’s very dense, high-altitude forest (hence the name “impenetrable”), veterinarian Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is working to…
I was always terrified of wasting time. A cancer diagnosis made me reconsider.
Click:Pre-terminated Cable Assemblies The room didn’t spin like they say it does. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I had no difficulty understanding the verdict: It was incurable. They could offer no prognosis. They had some general ideas about…
Hospital ICUs are filling up. It’s even worse than it sounds.
As of mid-December, hospitals on average had just 22 percent of their intensive care unit (ICU) beds available across the country, and many were completely full. As the Covid-19 surge continues to intensify, lack of ICU beds can have dire…
How we can encourage people to wear masks — for others’ sake
Governors, mayors, and public health officials are sounding the alarm about rising levels of Covid-19 across every part of the country. The disease is surging, the death toll is soaring, and it’s clear that some states need more restrictive measures…
The 4 major unknowns of how vaccines will affect the Covid-19 pandemic
Two highly effective Covid-19 vaccines are now being administered across the United States, and more are in the pipeline. Almost 2 million people have already received the first of two doses of these vaccines, and officials are aiming to immunize…