Joel Achenbach, Washington Post

Joel Achenbach

Washington Post

Washington, DC, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Washington Post
  • Cashay
  • Houston Chronicle
  • Inside Scoop SF
  • mySA
  • ScienceAlert
  • Smithsonian Magazine

Past articles by Joel:

The mythos of the Titanic remains unsinkable, even if the ship wasn’t

The Titanic story has defied the rules of history, brightening rather than fading with time. → Read More

Missing submersible plunged into exotic, dangerous world on way to Titanic

The bleak situation is a tragic reminder that when humans invade environments for which they are not adapted, there is minimal margin for error. → Read More

This alien ocean is the first known to have all elements crucial for life

The subsurface ocean on an icy moon of Saturn appears to have the ingredients needed for “habitability." → Read More

Covid was fourth leading cause of death in 2022, CDC data shows

Covid remained remarkably deadly, killing more than 500 people a day in 2022, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. → Read More

See the sharpest image yet of a supermassive black hole

The image can help theorists better understand the physics of black holes, while the technology used to create it can be applied to other types of research. → Read More

Strange DNA found in the desert offers lessons in the hunt for Mars life

“In almost half of the cases, the databases could not clearly say what we had in our hands,” said researchers studying rocks from the Atacama Desert in Chile. → Read More

NIH biosecurity advisers urge tighter oversight of pathogen research

A draft report from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity comes after a nearly year-long review of existing guidelines. → Read More

Lab-leak fears are putting virologists under scrutiny

The “lab leak” conjectures about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic have cast a shadow over pathogen research amid broader calls for more government oversight. → Read More

How deadly will China’s covid surge get? Answers to that and more.

How fast is the virus spreading? How long will the surge last? Will it spawn a new variant? Experts weigh in on what the science can reveal. → Read More

High number of mosquitoes found with mutation that resists insecticides

The insecticides that target disease-spreading mosquitoes are running into nature's ultimate defense mechanism: evolution. Scientists reported Wednesday that... → Read More

In a first, hear a Mars rover get hit by a 387-foot dust devil

The towering vortex slammed into the NASA rover Perseverance — and scientists are ecstatic → Read More

Mars rover digs up intriguing clues in the hunt for life beyond Earth

NASA's Perseverance mission has collected samples that hold life-friendly molecules “in pretty much every rock” — as well as a few geologic surprises → Read More

Cows fed hemp produced milk with THC, researchers say

Protein-rich hemp has promise as animal feed. But a German study shows that dairy cows fed industrial hemp can produce milk containing the buzzy compound THC. → Read More

Asteroids! Solar Storms! Nukes! Climate Calamity! Killer Robots!

A guide to contemporary doomsday scenarios — from the threats you know about to the ones you never think of. → Read More

Big rocks slam into Mars, gouge craters, reveal subsurface features

This was the biggest crater-forming impact on one of the rocky inner planets of the solar system ever documented in real time. → Read More

NASA reports smashing success with asteroid redirection test

NASA’s successful attempt to change an asteroid's orbit offers promise that the experimental technique could be applied as a practical form of planetary defense → Read More

Nobel Prize in physics awarded for breakthroughs in quantum mechanics

The announcement at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm laureated Alain Aspect of Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, in Palaiseau, France; John F. Clauser of J.F. Clauser & Assoc., Walnut Creek, Calif., and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna. → Read More

NASA crashes spacecraft into asteroid, passing planetary defense test

The 14,000-mile-per-hour collision of a small spacecraft into an asteroid was NASA’s first test of a potential planetary defense technology. → Read More

NASA spacecraft will slam into an asteroid Monday — if all goes right

If everything goes as planned, and the laws of gravity don’t change at the last minute, the asteroid collision will happen at exactly 7:14:23 EST Monday. → Read More

NIH advisers urge tighter oversight of experiments on deadly viruses

Debate over pathogen research has grown more rancorous amid speculation that some kind of “lab leak” might have played a role in the origin of the coronavirus. → Read More