What We're Reading

Magnetic north has recently shifted toward Siberia at a pace of 20 kilometers a year, but scientists have been unable to post an emergency update of the World Magnetic Model, used by cellphone GPS systems and military navigators.

A vast analysis tackles a defining question of the digital age. The answer? It's complicated.

Does the language you speak influence how you think? A new look at “the Russian Blues” demonstrates the power of words to shape perception.

A huge flare from a black hole helps reveal how matter and energy are expelled.

After training on 17,000 publicly available photos of patients affected by more than 200 rare disorders, a computer program called DeepGestalt learned to recognize facial features linked to hundreds of genetic syndromes.

The shutdown, now in its third week, has emptied some laboratories, forced scientists from the field, upended important conferences, imperiled the flow of grant money and disrupted careful planning of time-sensitive studies.

The real journey to the center of the Earth has begun, and scientists are discovering subsurface microbial beings that shake up what we think we know about life.

Fundamental discoveries don’t always have practical uses, but they have soul-saving applications. Times columnist Bret Stephens lays out the importance of cultivating curiosity.

Marc Kastner, president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance (of which the Simons Foundation is a founding member), argues that philanthropy plays a small but critical role in supporting research that government may not undertake and that it can fund explorations that might otherwise languish on the idea shelf.

The flyby of Ultima Thule has already cleared up one mystery: why the light reflecting off the snowman-shaped object does not fluctuate, as might be expected from an irregular spinning body. The reason: the rotation axis is pointed at the spacecraft.