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Story Behind a Picture

What the image of the Milky Way’s black hole really shows

The massive object at the galaxy’s center is invisible. But this year’s picture of the swirling plasma around its edges will help to reveal more about the galaxy’s history and evolution.

The danger lurking in an African lake

Kivu is no ordinary lake, with dense depths packed with methane and carbon dioxide gas. Its features hold aquatic puzzles, explosive hazards and the capacity to provide valuable energy.

The weapons of sexual rivalry

Male-male competition, and sometimes female preferences, have driven arms races for the flashiest horns, antlers, pincers, tusks and claws

Hotter than the sun: The mysterious solar corona

Several new missions aim squarely at a long-standing astronomical conundrum, with the promise of improving space-weather predictions

Tiny, living stones of the sea

How limestone-covered algae sway global climate — and how their fate may shift as the oceans acidify

How 3-D printing could help shape surgery

Technology is enabling increasingly lifelike models of organs to help doctors practice operations.

Life’s a blur — but we don’t see it that way

Our brains manage to construct stable images even as our eyes keep darting around. Here’s what we know about how that happens. 

Sticky science: Evolution of spiderwebs

The eight-legged weavers have been hunting insects for almost 400 million years, flaunting their long history in a rich array of architectures. Scientists are still figuring out the taxonomy of them all.

The quickening pace of global metabolism

The use of raw materials and production of waste rise with development around the world

Effects of a fence

A satellite image reveals how humans and their herds are changing the Arctic from the ground up

The self-made beauty of the centriole

Cells build an elegant, symmetrical structure. How they do it is intriguing on its own, but recent insights could also help explain some developmental disorders.

The base of the iceberg: It’s big and teeming with life

Passing chunks of ice can fertilize ocean waters and play a role in the planet’s carbon cycle

The marks of extinction

The mass die-offs of Earth’s past may hold clues to our future

Signs of how a language grows

In a village in Israel, the way the deaf communicate provides a rare look at a linguistic birth

A Notch on the many paths to cancer

Tumors and more may be fueled by an ancient protein with myriad jobs in the body. Scientists hope to tap this knowledge to generate novel therapies.

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