Will Sullivan

Will Sullivan

 

Will Sullivan is a science writer based in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in Inside Science and NOVA Next.

The bone fragment from four different angles, with a white scale bar representing one centimeter. The flat side of the bone contains puncture marks that suggest it was a punch board used for tailoring hides.

This 39,600-Year-Old Bone May Have Been Used by Prehistoric Tailors

New research suggests early Homo sapiens punched holes in leather hides to create seams for clothing

A drone made from a taxidermy bird.

Scientists Are Making Drones From Taxidermy Birds

They want to use the devices for less disruptive wildlife monitoring and to learn more about avian flight

Huge quantities of plastics make their way into oceans and other bodies of water.

The Pacific Garbage Patch Is Home to Coastal Species—in the Middle of the Ocean

These out-of-place organisms are thriving on floating trash, but they may compete with open-water species

A medical illustration of the right half of a human brain from 1876.

Scientists Update Map of How Our Brains Control Movement

The traditional diagram showed brain regions linked to specific body parts, but we might also have areas connected to whole-body control

Electric cars from Tesla, photographed in 2018

EPA Proposes Tightest-Ever Emissions Limits for Cars

If approved, the rules could lead to electric vehicles comprising 67 percent of new car sales by 2032

The T. Rex skeleton, named Trinity, in a photograph taken March 28. The skeleton's 293 bones come from three different specimens.

T. Rex Skeleton Sells for More Than $5 Million at Auction

Just over half the skeleton is made of actual fossils, which come from three different specimens

SpaceX's Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built.

Starship Explodes During Test Flight: What to Know About SpaceX’s Powerful Rocket

The 394-foot-tall Starship, the largest rocket ever built, flew for about four minutes on April 20

An illustration of the Snowball Earth with some open water around the equator and a newly proposed patch of ocean at mid-latitudes

How Life Could Have Survived the Frozen ‘Snowball Earth’

During a prehistoric ice age when the planet was enveloped in glaciers, algae could have made a living in patchy, open oceans, study suggests

The rocket carrying the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer launches from French Guiana on April 14. 

Juice Mission Launches to Explore Jupiter and Its Icy Moons

The spacecraft will investigate oceans that might lie beneath the moons' surfaces and study whether they could support life

Lake Mead in July 2021—the lighter colored rocks indicate how high water levels used to be. Last summer, the lake was filled to just 27 percent of capacity, its lowest water levels since 1937.

U.S. Proposes Cuts to Colorado River Water Usage

Negotiations between states have not produced an agreement on how to allocate the dwindling water, so the federal government has offered tentative plans

An artist's rendition of the runaway black hole with the stream of stars trailing behind it. Its former host galaxy is in the upper right of the image.

Black Hole Hurtling Through Space Leaves a Trail of Stars in Its Wake

Researchers theorize a stream of stars 200,000 light-years long came from a black hole ejected from its galaxy

A zoomed-in image of Uranus captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Eleven of the planet's 13 rings are visible, though some are so bright they appear to blend into one ring.

James Webb Telescope Captures Detailed Image of Uranus’ Rings

The high-tech observatory also observed two storm clouds on the planet, a polar cap, six moons and distant galaxies

Lab-raised cockroaches adapted to maintain their glucose-focused sex lives while still avoiding sugary baited traps set by humans.

Cockroach Sex Is Evolving in Response to Pesticides

A new study highlights the insects' resiliency in spite of human attempts to kill them

An offshore drilling and production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which is the largest offshore fossil fuel production basin in the United States.

Methane Emissions Are Higher Than Thought From Gulf of Mexico Drilling

The climate impact of oil and gas production in the Gulf is double what government agencies estimate, according to a new study

Seabirds catch fish swimming near the ocean's surface, but in the process, they also ingest microplastics.

Microplastics Linked to Changes in Seabirds’ Guts

Birds that ingested more microplastics had more microbes linked to diseases and antibiotic resistance in a new study

A group of snailfish swims between 7,500 and 8,200 meters below sea level. The deepest fish was filmed at 8,336 meters under the surface.

Behold the Deepest Fish Ever Filmed

A juvenile snailfish was caught on video more than five miles below sea level in waters south of Japan

Large land snails are rich in nutrients and can weigh up to about two pounds.

Humans May Have Eaten Giant Snails 170,000 Years Ago

Shell fragments from a cave in southern Africa show signs of exposure to extreme heat, suggesting they were cooked

Researchers use microphones to measure the noises emitted by tomato plants.

Plants Make Noises When Stressed, Study Finds

Scientists detected high-frequency sounds emitted by plants that had been cut or dehydrated

From left to right: astronauts Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Hammock Koch during a news conference following Monday's announcement.

NASA Announces Crew for Artemis 2 Moon Flyby Mission

These four astronauts are poised to travel farther than any humans have been from Earth since 1972

New research suggests Native Americans used horses of European descent long before colonizers arrived in the American West.

New Research Rewrites the History of American Horses

Native Americans spread the animals across the West before Europeans arrived in the region, archaeological evidence and Indigenous knowledge show

loading icon