Photography by Paul-Alexander Lejas You may not feel it, but the Earth is moving underneath your feet. Plate tectonics—the processes that move the rigid, cohesive, rocky plates of Earth’s crust—is something most of us take for granted, despite its profound effects on the state of the planet. How long plate tectonics have been operating on […]

Photography by Paul-Alexander Lejas As energy demands soar and environmental concerns grow, the search for more efficient technologies has never been more urgent. Superconductors—materials that can conduct electricity with zero resistance—offer an enticing solution. They allow for continuous flow of energy without loss. But there’s a catch: so far, superconductors only work at extremely low […]

Art by Melody Jiang The universe was born in a fiery explosion, expanding outwards in all directions. For billions of years following the Big Bang, the tug of gravity worked to slow its growth. But then, the unexplainable happened—the universe began to expand at an accelerating rate, driven by an invisible force scientists have termed […]

Photography by Michelle So From ocean waters to soil, and from hot springs to human microbiomes, tiny battles between bacteria and viruses are constantly unfolding. These battles start when bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria, bind to receptors on a bacterial host cell. In a process known as lytic replication, the phage injects its genome […]

Art by Alondra Moreno Santana Neither Kaiyue Ma GSAS ’23 nor Monkol Lek ever imagined they would work in genetics—Ma was an aspiring evolutionary biologist and Lek was an IBM engineer. But now as researchers at the Yale School of Medicine, the duo recently announced a new platform for genetic assays with the potential to […]