Living World
Species, ecosystems, and our shared planet
-
Humans Are Still Evolving, and in Some Bizarre Ways
Five recent studies show natural selection still at work in living people: Turkana kidneys tuned for 1.5 liters of water a day, Bajau spleens 50% larger for diving, skin that lightened in under 40,000 years, myopia genes spreading within 25 years, and a shift from genetic to cultural inheritance.
-
The fog is alive—and it may be scrubbing toxins from the air
A 2026 mBio study finds bacteria growing inside radiation fog droplets and degrading formaldehyde 200 times faster than measured before, recasting fog as a living aquatic habitat.
-
Sperm whale “vowels” and human-like phonology—what the 2026 study adds
Project CETI’s April 2026 paper shows whale clicks pattern like human vowels—not random noise, but still not a translated language.
-
The galaxy left a receipt in Antarctic ice—and we finally read it
A 2026 Physical Review Letters study traces supernova iron-60 through 80,000 years of frozen snow, mapping the Solar System’s drift into the Local Interstellar Cloud.
-
Whales may use a combinatorial “phonetic” code—what the 2024 study actually found
MIT and Project CETI analyzed thousands of sperm whale codas and found structured variation—not decoded language, but a step toward understanding other minds.