Biodiversity
Who Checks on the Seeds?
A vault in the hills holds 400,000 samples meant to outlast us. Keeping them alive takes a small crew, a freezer alarm and a very long to-do list.
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Section
Science
Long experiments, slow data and the patience behind discovery.
Latest in Science
Astronomy
An Observatory on Borrowed Time
Its telescope is a century old and its funding runs out in March. Its astronomers are using the time they have left to finish a sky survey begun in 1931.
Oceans
What a Healthy Reef Sounds Like
Snapping shrimp, grunting fish and the crackle of life. Scientists are learning to restore reefs by playing them back their own noise.
Ecology
Counting Mushrooms for Forty Autumns
A retired schoolteacher has walked the same forest plots every October since 1986. Her notebooks are now one of the best fungal records anywhere.
Measurement
The Volunteers Who Have Measured One Harbour’s Tide Since 1890
A brass gauge, a shed and a rota of retired sailors. Their unbroken record now shows the sea rising in a way no model could have told them.
Climate
Reading a Glacier Like a Ledger
Each summer’s melt leaves a line. A team that has cored the same glacier for twenty-two years is reading those lines as a household reads its accounts.
Evolution
The Lab That Has Grown the Same Bacteria Since 1988
Every day for nearly forty years, someone has moved a drop of culture into a fresh flask. The experiment’s real subject may be patience.