Story Behind a Picture

Story Behind a Picture

Short animated clip shows dynamic streaks of red and orange circling a dark center.

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.

A layer of blue swirls atop one of red, representing two separate regions within Lake Kivu.

Physical World

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.

A line drawing montage of various animal weapons.

Living World

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

Image shows a view of the sun and its corona. Half of the image is taken in UV light. The right half of the image shows the sun in visible light during an eclipse, when its corona can be easily seen.

Physical World

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

Living World

Tiny, living stones of the sea

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

Technology

How 3-D printing could help shape surgery

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

Living World

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.

Drawing of a tree with many spiders and webs hanging in its branches and clinging to its trunk. Spiders and their relatives also wander the ground below.

Living World

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.

A colorful image taken with a special camera inside a honeybee hive shows a bee at rest.

Living World

What droopy antennae, crouching cockroaches and still fruit flies have to tell us about the secrets of sleep

Slumbering bugs offer clues to explaining humans’ need for shut-eye<div xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>

Iron ore loading facility in Port Hedland, Australia

Food & Environment

The quickening pace of global metabolism

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

A satellite image shows how a decades-old fence erected between Finland and Norway affected Arctic vegetation by altering the movement of reindeer herds.

Food & Environment

Effects of a fence

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

Conceptual image of a pair of centrioles, in 3-D.

Living World

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.