The eye is an amazing instrument, but it does not function alone. Even with visual receptors rapidly sending data along the optic nerve, no mental image will form at all unless the brain is properly equipped to manage the input. One data processing feature of the brain enables what is called perceptual stability.

While examining an area near the center of the Milky Way, astronomers saw something they were not expecting. An inordinately high number of average-looking stars are grouped there in a formation known as the Arches Cluster, which is surprising since it is located so near to the black hole at the heart of the galaxy.

A research intern for the Wildlife Conservation Society, Muse Opiang, completed the first field study ever conducted on the long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal found only in New Guinea.¹ Representing four years and 6,000 man-hours of work, Opiang’s field observations include a catalog of dwellings and habits that befit an animal clearly formed with a collection of mosaic featur

The human ear is an amazing device. In a recent press release, an MIT engineer said that the ear is “like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels.”¹ In fact, its design inspired the development of a new space and energy-saving radio receiver chip.