Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Gravitational lenses produce multiple images of single astronomical objects. The most widely separated images of a quasar ever found reveal the dark-matter content of the lensing galaxies.
Both Mars and Earth have experienced ice ages in geologically recent times. Coincidence of the phenomenon on two planets will further the scientific quest to answer the question of how ice ages originate.
Of the 325 News and Views articles published this year, seven are singled out for special attention. They illustrate the great job that scientists can do in communicating and commenting on new research.
One might imagine that the first examples of art would be simple and crude. New finds bolster the evidence that modern humans were astonishingly quick in developing their artistic skills.
Lipids can hop between cellular compartments without using the transport vesicles that carry proteins. A key molecule involved in conveying the lipid ceramide has at last been uncovered.
For nearly 40 years, organic chemists have been fascinated by the idea of aromatic molecules that have the topology of a Möbius strip. No such molecule has been isolated — until now.
Chromosomal passenger proteins undergo spectacular changes in localization during cell division. We now have molecular insight into how and why these changes occur.
Even before they can fly, some young birds can run up vertical surfaces by using their wingbeats to add traction to their legs. Such behaviour may be relevant to understanding the origin of avian flight.
Left- and right-handed helical molecules form mirror-image chiral crystals on a copper substrate. It seems that the substrate and the molecules work in concert to determine the handedness of the crystal domains.
Nothing travels faster than light, but how slow can light go? Pulses of light have already been slowed to speeds of just a few metres per second, but now they have been brought to a complete halt.