Top 5

A rocky world, the right distance from its star, and now a detectable atmosphere. Every previous candidate failed one of those three tests. This one hasn't yet.

Britain changed prime ministers this week, and the new one built his base entirely outside Westminster, as mayor of Manchester. That route was supposed to be a dead end.

There's a cyclospora outbreak moving across the US right now. The CDC lab that types the parasite lost staff last year, and its former director does the arithmetic out loud.

A goldfish in a Toronto tank is out-picking the chatbots on World Cup results. The joke writes itself; the piece is really about what a prediction claim is worth.

Britain wanted a bomb quickly, so it cut corners on the reactor that would make the material. Harford tells the 1957 fire as a story about deadlines, not physics.