Eric Ralls

An elephant's trunk is one of the most versatile tools in nature. It can drag a fallen tree trunk, strip leaves from a branch, or gently peel a banana without crushing the fruit.

Walk down the dairy aisle, and it's easy to assume milk and plant-based alternatives are more or less interchangeable.

The middle of the Milky Way is anything but quiet. Stars fill the region, dust clouds make observations difficult, and the galaxy's earliest history is still written across its crowded core.

Thawing ground has earned a grim reputation in climate science. The picture looks simple – frozen soil warms, the ancient carbon it holds

A hillside of hand-cut rice terraces can look like a postcard from the past, the kind of farming the modern world supposedly left behind.

Some planets refuse to make life easy for astronomers. GJ504b is one of them.

It feels safe to assume that a sharper weather model must be a more accurate one. Today's global models are the sharpest ever built.

Babies love looking at themselves in mirrors. A smile, a babble, or a wide-eyed stare at the tiny face looking back is a familiar sight for many parents.

Grabbing energy, storing it, and then spending it later are usually three separate jobs. A solar panel does the catching. A battery does the holding.

Almost everyone has done it. You crumple a sheet of paper into a ball, eye the wastebasket across the room, and let it fly. Sink it and there's a small rush.