THE LAST TRANSMISSIONStories from the Edge of ScienceSCIENCE ARTICLES / 149 WRITTEN STORIES
Find an illustrated science story, follow a research question, and continue to the full article on Substack. Browse the articles below, or explore our documentary collection .
CURATED ROUTES / START HERE
These 6 routes connect the illustrated articles to our original Field Notes, Evidence Files, documentaries, image stories, and 3D Atlas views. Start with a question that catches your attention, then take the path as far as you like.
01 / ALIEN OCEANS
Europa’s hidden ocean is inferred from a magnetic response, not a picture taken through the ice. The measurement supports liquid beneath the surface, but it cannot show us what happens at the seafloor. Cassini reached a different ocean by flying through material erupting from Enceladus, then ended in Saturn to protect the worlds it had helped us understand.
What can we actually infer about life from each mission’s measurements?
02 / SPACECRAFT
Voyager’s signal must travel an immense distance while its power dwindles. Bennu’s sample came home through a tightly timed recovery. Parker entered the Sun’s outer atmosphere and sent back a beacon after its closest approach. Each machine has a different limit, and each changed what we know before the next signal could arrive.
What can a spacecraft tell us before distance, heat, or time closes the window?
03 / COSMIC MYSTERIES
Two ways of measuring cosmic expansion do not settle on the same answer. Light from the early galaxies carries another question about when the universe became transparent. Calling either puzzle a crisis is easy. Following the instruments, the assumptions, and the independent tests is where the story gets interesting.
Which observation is secure, and which interpretation could still change?
04 / HIDDEN SYSTEMS
Changes deep inside Earth can nudge the length of a day. Solar storms can expose the weakness of systems that keep the lights on. A nuclear clock can register differences too small for earlier instruments to resolve. In each case, a small measurement reveals the behavior of something much larger than the observer.
What would we miss if we only watched the surface?
05 / CELLULAR MEMORY
Bacteria have no brain, yet an earlier chemical state can affect how they move later and influence their descendants. Experiments with E. coli trace that persistence to iron-associated state, with the effect fading over generations. Follow the assays into the Evidence File, then look inside a bacterial cell and see what the artwork imagines.
What does a memory mean when there is no mind to recall it?
06 / STELLAR COMPANIONS
Two brown dwarfs circle every 57 minutes as material crosses between them. A bright accretion region can make the pair conspicuous without proving that either core has begun sustained hydrogen fusion. Follow the observations, then compare binary evolution in Stellar Fates and the illustrated stream feeding the companion.
Is the glow evidence of a star, or of what its companion is giving it?
THE FULL ARTICLE COLLECTION
All published science articles in date order, newest first. Each entry opens the complete illustrated story on Substack.
Showing 1–30 of 149 articles · Page 1 of 5
MMX will investigate how Phobos formed and whether its dust contains fragments ejected from Mars. Follow the mission, the sample-return plan, and the limits of the evidence.
Before her one-way flight, a doctor brought her home to play with his children. That small kindness leaves us with a harder question about what it means to care.
Two nearly identical optical disturbances, 4.4 seconds apart, appeared in HD 89389’s light. Follow the unexplained record, a foreground diffraction hypothesis, and the synchronized telescopes proposed to test it.
For nearly three decades, scientists have struggled to identify the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe. Now a radical theory suggests the answer.
NASA is watching for a supernova we have already seen. When that light finally reaches Earth, it could help answer one of the most troubling questions in modern cosmology.
Two space powers are racing toward a crater where the Sun has barely touched the ground for billions of years. What lies in the darkness could determine humanity's future on the Moon.
Scientists have identified distant worlds that may offer life conditions more favorable than our own. Some could have warmer oceans, longer-lived suns, and billions of extra years for evolution.
Scientists created mice whose cortical tissue was almost entirely derived from human cells. The tissue grew, formed connections, generated electrical activity, and revealed something extraordinary.
An enormous black hole is blasting energy into the Phoenix Cluster, yet its central galaxy is producing stars at an extraordinary rate.
Deep beneath the ocean, scientists discovered radioactive debris from beyond Earth. The most disturbing clue was an element they could not find.
In the spring of 2024, something struck the Moon hard enough to leave an impact crater. When scientists finally discovered the impact, they found that its effects reached astonishing distances.
A study traces the signal to a young giant planet and infers a magnetic field of at least 1,250 gauss where the bursts originate. The discovery could open a way to investigate worlds.
Thirty years ago, Sakurai’s Object appeared to reverse its own death. Then it vanished inside a cloud of carbon dust.
One source has remained radio-bright for two decades while its X-rays stay undetected. The deeper mystery may be how many others we have missed.
Nearly 49 years after leaving Earth, Voyager 1 is discovering that interstellar space is anything but empty.
A model identifies a window for life’s chemistry 4.33 billion years ago. The unsettling question is whether Earth was the only world to take advantage of it.
Webb is revealing a possible hidden phase of black hole growth that could change how we read the early universe
Webb found a cold giant just 12 light-years away. Its unexpectedly weak ammonia signature raises a question we need to answer before interpreting another Earth.
Clyde Tombaugh discovered a world he would never see up close. Follow the people who carried his discovery to Pluto aboard New Horizons, with the documentary and its illustrated companion article.
Arachnids were hunting on land long before the first forests appeared. The fossils behind their story reveal an ancient invasion and remarkable inventions.
We are learning to harvest heat from rock, store electricity in rust, and imitate the physics of stars. Every breakthrough still has to make it home.
Ancient light still tells us where we came from. If cosmic acceleration continues, future astronomers could inherit a sky that conceals much of that history.
Our mitochondria descend from bacteria that entered an ancient partnership. Research is revealing how deeply that partnership still shapes life.
In 1957, two astronomers photographed what appeared to be an ordinary blue star. They had no idea they had recorded the light of one of the most monstrous black holes ever discovered.
A runaway star’s motion points back to the Galactic Center, where a black hole may have broken a binary apart and sent its members toward very different futures.
A pair of brown dwarfs circles every 57 minutes, while Webb is uncovering tiny worlds that blur the boundary between planets and stars.
A passing stellar remnant could break the bond that makes our world habitable, while Earth itself remained outside the event horizon.
An enormous region of the universe contains remarkably few galaxies. The truly unsettling question is what the cosmos would look like if we lived inside it.
The James Webb Space Telescope has found an ancient black hole containing 50 million times the mass of our Sun, yet the stars surrounding it appear to weigh less than half as much.
Gliese 710 will pass through our distant comet reservoir in roughly 1.3 million years. Earlier stellar visitors suggest the Solar System has never been as isolated as it feels.
Explore the original publication archive on Substack.
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