Flooding rains and other extreme weather events often lead people to ask whether climate change is to blame. That’s hard to answer, although an emerging field of research is getting better at that.

These colored bands are one of Earth’s growth charts. They show strata — layers of rock — in Romania containing dino fossils that have been deposited over time. Scientists can date these strata to understand when the fossilized animals within them had lived.

A now-discredited study once linked vaccines and autism. But many studies have since shown that vaccinations don’t lead to the brain disorder.

This is an artist’s interpretation of what the black hole named Cygnus X-1 might look like. It formed after a large star imploded on itself. The intense gravity of this black hole is drawing in mass from a nearby blue star.