Many people turn to companies like 23andMe to learn about ancestry and ethnicity. But the genetic connection is far more complicated than the industry lets on. — By Jack Herrera It’s always a mess when Latinx folks take DNA tests. Things go alright, until we get to the “ancestry” portion, which some commercial genetic tests label as “ethnicity.” People who identify as Latinx claim ancestry from all over: indigenous Americans, Spanish colonists, enslaved Africans, Middle Eastern people…

The night sky is changing, and we can’t figure out why — By Charlie Wood History would have us believe that the night sky is permanent and unchanging. After all, navigators have steered their ships using fixed stellar patterns for centuries, and our eyes still trace the same outlines of the same heroes and villains that star gazers have identified for millennia…

Conference travel, stargazing and supercomputing produce a surprising amount of emissions — By Charlie Wood Astronomers spend much of their time pondering events that played out eons ago in galaxies many light years away. …

The seemingly opposite conditions of autonomous sensory meridian response and misophonia could have quite a lot in common — By Eleanor Cummins YouTube is a garden of digital delights: Celebrities invite you into their homes, algorithms serve up your favorite music, and strangers whisper you to sleep. If that last one sounds weird, then you probably ­haven’t experienced autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR. For some, things like fluttering…

When someone does something cringe-worthy, it might be more about you than them — By Benjamin Powers Democratic presidential primary candidate Pete Buttigieg’s name has been popping across Twitter the last few weeks. Not because he’s pulled ahead of some challengers in early primary states, but because his supporters have turned his campaign event walk-on song (“High Hopes” by Panic! …

The peculiar bugs could illuminate what signs to look for on Mars and beyond — By Charlie Wood What might alien life look like, and what traces would it leave behind? If extraterrestrial plant and plankton analogs fill their planet’s atmosphere with oxygen, or an advanced civilization fills its skies with satellites, we might be able to spot such global upheavals from Earth. …

There’s no evidence to support the use of activated charcoal in beauty or health products — By Kat Eschner In the past few years, activated charcoal has become a common ingredient in over-the-counter beauty and health products — not to mention it’s also made an appearance in coffee, ice cream, and cookies, among other things, turning them all an elegant black. In particular, the substance has…

Something powerful split open the icy moon’s south pole — By Charlie Wood When the Cassini spacecraft swung by Saturn’s moon Enceladus in 2005, its cameras glimpsed a particularly arresting feature of the alien world: tiger stripes. …

The dead star is enjoying its final meal — By Charlie Wood Someday, our sun will swell into a red giant and scorch everything in its path before collapsing into a white-hot dwarf star. In solar systems with stars like our own, this apocalypse tends to wipe out any inner planets. …