Small discoveries, big journey: science from the past few days

Sometimes the big news hides in the tiniest detail. This week, science shows how researchers around the world keep patiently watching, listening and measuring, from a caterpillar without ears to a spacecraft that finally arrives after years. The stories vary, but they share one thing: attention that ultimately yields something beautiful. Take the yellow warblers from Alaska [1]. These songbirds are too small for heavy transmitters, so they were fitted with tiny geolocators, no bigger than a Tic Tac. These measure air pressure and light during flight, so that researchers can later, when they recapture the birds a year later,...