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We Literally Used To Behead Astronomers Over Their Eclipse Predictions
A Babylonian clay tablet gives the oldest intact record of a solar eclipse, on March 5, 1223 BCE. “The sun went down, its gatekeeper was Mars,” the tablet says.
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7 Animals That Freak Out During Eclipses
When the sun or moon vanishes from the sky, it tends to weird out animals just as much as people.
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Scientists Are Shocked About How Easy It Is To Tweak Genes In Human Embryos
“This is not the beginning of designer babies,” said one bioethicist. But good luck getting people to believe that.
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NASA’s Mars Program Is As Sad As It’s Ever Been
While a flashy mock Mars rover parades across the country, the real ones have never been more in danger of losing touch with Earth. “NASA is barely keeping the Mars Exploration Program on life support,” a new review finds.
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A Penis Enlargement Killed A Man In Sweden
“It’s a completely useless procedure that never works and disfigures men, and could kill you,” one urologist said.
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We Could Have Gone Past The Moon In 2020. But NASA Nixed It
The space agency decided against a manned mission to the moon, but not because of astronaut safety, a summary report concludes.
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The Way TSA Agents Profile You At The Airport Is Not Based On Legit Science, Report Says
A new report finds no “valid evidence” for the TSA’s $186 million “Behavioral Detection Assessment” program. But the agency says it will keep doing it anyway.
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Here’s What You Need To Know About John McCain’s Very “Aggressive” Cancer
Glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, afflicts about 12,000 people nationwide every year.
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We Have Been Lead Poisoning Ourselves For 2000 Years, Glacier Ice Shows
The Black Death, when people were too busy dying to mine for lead, was the only time period when lead in the air dropped back to its natural, undetectable levels.
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This Map Shows How Some US Counties Are Prescribing Way More Opioids Than Others
“Clinical practice is all over the place,” one expert said. Around 20,000 people died of prescription pain pill overdoses in 2015.
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These Three Very Good Police Dogs Overdosed On Fentanyl — And Lived
“The insidious this thing is that the amount of fentanyl that could kill you is so small it’s invisible,” a detective said.
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Health Care Cuts Will Increase Odds Of Dying For The Uninsured, Medical Review Predicts
For every 1 million people who lose health insurance, about 1,300 people nationwide could die early, according to an Annals of Internal Medicine review.
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Trump Wants To Build A Solar Wall With Mexico. Solar Experts Say That’s “Stupid And Pointless.”
Building a massive solar wall bordering Mexico wouldn’t be easy, solar experts said, and makes little economic sense.
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The New Health Care Bill Would Mean Big Cuts For Opioid Addiction Treatment
Medicaid currently covers 3 in 10 people with an opioid addiction, and faces a proposed $830 billion cut. The new health care bill would, as written, be “a death sentence for millions of Americans,” said one treatment advocate.
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Scientists Didn’t Stop Their Study Of Premature Babies Even After Finding Out That It Depended On Broken Oxygen Meters
An experiment on 1,300 premature infants continued despite oxygen meters that didn’t work right, public records uncovered by a health advocacy group show.
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How 2 Science Papers From The ‘80s Helped Spark The Opioid Crisis
The New England Journal of Medicine just issued an odd correction to a 1980 painkiller study. It was one of two papers from that decade that became, as one expert put it, “fake evidence” for pharma executives to encourage the use of opioids.
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This Drug Is Cheaper And More Powerful Than Heroin — And May Be Killing Way More People
A kilo of heroin nets a dealer $60,000. A kilo of fentanyl? $1.2 million.
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Republicans And Trump Are Reviving George Bush’s Climate Politics
Never mind the climate science, Republicans are back to hoping technology can save the planet.
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Trump Announced That The US Is Pulling Out Of The Paris Climate Deal
The president called the 2015 international agreement a “deal that punishes the United States,” but added that the US will try to negotiate “a deal that’s fair.”
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The Descendants Of James Madison’s Slaves Are Digging Up His Plantation
A new exhibition is tying the lives of people enslaved by James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, to their living descendants.
