Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
Image 1
Oryzomys couesi, also known as Coues's rice rat, is a semiaquaticrodent in the family Cricetidae occurring from southernmost Texas through Mexico and Central America into northwestern Colombia. It is usually found in wet habitats, such as marshes, but also lives in drier forests and shrublands. Weighing about 43 to 82 g (1.5 to 2.9 oz), O. couesi is a medium-sized to large rat. The coarse fur is buff to reddish above and white to buff below. The hindfeet show some specializations for life in the water, such as reduced ungual tufts of hair around the digits. It has 56 chromosomes. There is much geographic variation in size, proportions, color, and skull features. Oryzomys couesi is active during the night and builds nests of vegetation that are suspended among reeds about 1 m (3.3 ft) above the ground. It is an excellent swimmer and dives well, but can also climb in vegetation. An omnivore, it eats both plant and animal food, including seeds and insects. It breeds throughout the year; females give birth to about four young after a pregnancy of 21 to 28 days. The species may be infected by several different parasites and by two hantaviruses. (Full article...)
Image 2
In flight, Kilauea Point, Kauai, Hawaii
The red-tailed tropicbird (Phaethon rubricauda) is a seabird native to tropical parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. One of three closely related species of tropicbird (Phaethontidae), it was described by Pieter Boddaert in 1783. Superficially resembling a tern in appearance, it has almost all-white plumage with a black mask and a red bill. The sexes have similar plumage. As referenced in the common name, adults have red tail streamers that are about twice their body length. Four subspecies are recognised, but there is evidence of clinal variation in body size—with smaller birds in the north and larger in the south—and hence no grounds for subspecies. (Full article...)
Image 3
Cygnus X-1 (abbreviated Cyg X-1) is a galactic X-ray source in the constellationCygnus and was the first such source widely accepted to be a black hole. It was discovered in 1964 during a rocket flight and is one of the strongest X-ray sources detectable from Earth, producing a peak X-ray flux density of 2.3×10−23W/(m2⋅Hz) (2.3×103jansky). It remains among the most studied astronomical objects in its class. The compact object is now estimated to have a mass about 21.2 times the mass of the Sun and has been shown to be too small to be any known kind of normal star or other likely object besides a black hole. If so, the radius of its event horizon has 300 km "as upper bound to the linear dimension of the source region" of occasional X-ray bursts lasting only for about 1 ms. (Full article...)
Image 4
Myriostoma calongei, Bolivia
Myriostoma is a fungal genus in the familyGeastraceae. Basidiocarps resemble earthstars, but the spore sac is supported by multiple columns (instead of a single column) and has multiple ostioles instead of a single, apical ostiole. Until 2017, the genus was thought to be monotypic with a single, widespread species, Myriostoma coliforme. Recent research has, however, shown that at least six species occur worldwide. (Full article...)
Image 5
Banksia verticillata, commonly known as granite banksia or Albany banksia, is a species of shrub or (rarely) tree of the genus Banksia in the family Proteaceae. It is native to the southwest of Western Australia and can reach up to 3 m (10 ft) in height. It can grow taller to 5 m (16 ft) in sheltered areas, and much smaller in more exposed areas. This species has elliptic green leaves and large, bright golden yellow inflorescences or flower spikes, appearing in summer and autumn. The New Holland honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae) is the most prominent pollinator, although several other species of honeyeater, as well as bees, visit the flower spikes. (Full article...)
Image 6
The Pacific swift (Apus pacificus) is a species of bird that is part of the Swift family. It breeds in eastern Asia. It is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere's winter in Southeast Asia and Australia. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative, the common swift, from which it is distinguished by a white rump band and heavily marked underparts. The sexes are identical in appearance, although young birds can be identified by pale fringes to the wing feathers that are absent in adults. This swift's main call is a screech typical of its family. It is one of a group of closely related Asian swifts formerly regarded as one species. (Full article...)
Image 7
Sky photo with the Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990, as the faint near-vertical track just to the right of the pole star, taken at Červená hora, Czechoslovakia.
On 13 October 1990, meteoroid EN131090, with an estimated mass of 44 kg, entered the Earth's atmosphere above Czechoslovakia and Poland and, after a few seconds, returned to space. Observations of such events are quite rare; this was the second recorded using scientific astronomical instruments (after the 1972 Great Daylight Fireball) and the first recorded from two distant positions, which enabled the calculation of several of its orbital characteristics. The encounter with Earth significantly changed its orbit and, to a smaller extent, some of its physical properties (mass and structure of its outer layer). (Full article...)
Fork-marked lemurs or fork-crowned lemurs are strepsirrhine primates; the four species comprise the genusPhaner. Like all lemurs, they are native to Madagascar, where they are found only in the west, north, and east sides of the island. They are named for the two black stripes which run up from the eyes, converge on the top of the head, and run down the back as a single black stripe. They were originally placed in the genus Lemur in 1839, later moved between the genera Cheirogaleus and Microcebus, and given their own genus in 1870 by John Edward Gray. Only one species (Phaner furcifer) was recognized, until three subspecies described in 1991 were promoted to species status in 2001. New species may yet be identified, particularly in northeast Madagascar. (Full article...)
Image 9
Xeromphalina setulipes is a species of fungus of the family Mycenaceae. First collected in 2005, it was described and named in 2010 by Fernando Esteve-Raventós and Gabriel Moreno, and is known only from oak forests in Ciudad Real Province, Spain. The species produces mushrooms with dark reddish-brown caps up to 15 millimetres (0.59 in) across, dark purplish-brown stems up to 45 millimetres (1.8 in) in height and distinctive, arched, brown gills. The mushrooms were found growing directly from the acidic soil of the forest floor, surrounded by plant waste, during November. (Full article...)
Banksia telmatiaea, commonly known as swamp fox banksia or rarely marsh banksia, is a shrub that grows in marshes and swamps along the lower west coast of Australia. It grows as an upright bush up to 2 metres (6 feet 7 inches) tall, with narrow leaves and a pale brown flower spike, which can produce profuse quantities of nectar. First collected in the 1840s, it was not published as a separate species until 1981; as with several other similar species it was previously included in B. sphaerocarpa (fox banksia). (Full article...)
This portal needs to be updated. Please help update this portal to reflect recent events or newly available information. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.
Many naturally occurring phenomena approximate a normal distribution.
Complete requests of other editors on the talk pages of science-related articles (examples)
Expand 2025 in science and/or other articles for science-related topics of the year (in the box on the right)
Create new articles for items of this article, mostly articles relating to new scientific fields/topics/findings (the page does not use redlinks anymore but you will quickly identify possible new articles when reading it; here you can find a version with over 60 redlinked examples)
Some of the lists' items have not yet been integrated into their wikilinked articles; if you add a study there it should also be relevant to at least one other article
Find[how?] studies published under a compatible open license (like CC BY 4.0) and upload the studies' images with descriptions from the study and add these images to articles if they are relevant and useful there
When a study with a useful image is published under an incompatible or unclear license (or the image is published not in a study but elsewhere), you could contact its authors (Twitter/Mail) and ask them to give you the permission to upload them under CC BY 4.0 (or whether they could upload the image/s under a compatible license)
You can also think about whether images would be useful as you read a science-related article and then search for such images:
if they already exist add them (if already on WMCommons) or upload them (if the license is ok) or ask their authors for permissions
A plot of normal distribution (or bell-shaped curve) where each band has a width of 1 standard deviation – See also: 68–95–99.7 rule. In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation of the values of a variable about its mean. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range. The standard deviation is commonly used in the determination of what constitutes an outlier and what does not. Standard deviation may be abbreviated SD or std dev, and is most commonly represented in mathematical texts and equations by the lowercase Greek letterσ (sigma), for the population standard deviation, or the Latin letters, for the sample standard deviation. (Full article...)
In this illustration by Milo Winter of Aesop's fable, "The North Wind and the Sun", a personified North Wind tries to strip the cloak off a traveler. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals. (Full article...)
Sci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls (see Serials crisis). The site is extensively used worldwide. In September 2019, the site's operator(s) said that it served approximately 400,000 requests per day. In addition to its intensive use, Sci-Hub stands out among other shadow libraries because of its easy use/reliability and because of the enormous size of its collection; a 2018 study estimated that Sci-Hub provided access to most of the scholarly publications with issued DOI numbers. On 15 July 2022, Sci-Hub reported that its collection comprised 88,343,822 files. Since December 2020, the site has paused uploads due to legal troubles. (Full article...)
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
.jpg)
.svg)
Nobel Prize in Physics diploma, by Sofia Gisberg (restored by Jebulon) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance at Primary production, by SeaWiFS Project (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Vibrating glass beam at Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, by Ben pcc (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Drop impact on a liquid surface, by José Manuel Suárez (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Archaeologists prospecting Santa Ana Cave at Excavation (archaeology), by Mario modesto (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Animation of a water drop, by Chris 73 and Gmaxwell (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Section of the Large Hadron Collider, by Maximilien Brice (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Peruvian Andes at United States Exploring Expedition, by Alfred Thomas Agate (edited by Durova) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Projectile motion of a bouncing ball at Inelastic collision, by MichaelMaggs (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
NASA study on wingtip vortices at Wake turbulence, by Langley Research Center (edited by Fir0002) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Simulation of liquids with different viscosities, by Synapticrelay (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Archaeological excavation at Atapuerca Mountains, by Mario modesto (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Mechanical advantage device, by Prolineserver (edited by Tomia, Ss181292 and Atropos235) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Toroid magnets of the ATLAS detector, by Maximilien Brice, CERN (edited by Bammesk) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Translational motion at Thermodynamic temperature, by Greg L (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Parallax, by Mila Zinkova (edited by Richard Bartz) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Color cathodoluminescence of a diamond, by Pavel.Somov (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
.jpg)
_-_Climate_Lab_Book_(Ed_Hawkins).png){kind=small}
.png)
Vital articles to understand Science.
