For the first time in U.S. history, a death row inmate has been killed with a lethal injection containing fentanyl, a potent drug at the heart of the ongoing opioid overdose crisis.

The State of New York is suing Purdue Pharma, one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of opioid painkillers, for what it says is the company’s role in driving the opioid crisis. On Tuesday morning, the attorney general’s office announced that it was filing a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company for…

Every once in a while, our planet captures a “mini-moon,” a tiny asteroid that hangs out in our orbit for a bit before venturing back into the depths of space. New research suggests these small, temporary natural satellites carry tremendous scientific and commercial opportunities—but the trick will be in finding them.

Not getting enough or the right kind of sleep is notoriously bad for physical health. But a new study out of the University of California, Berkeley suggests that poor sleep can be a nightmare for our social lives too. It just might turn us into lonely outcasts, capable of spreading our misery to others.

It’s been around 100,000 years since California’s Long Valley supervolcano experienced a major eruption, but this supposedly dormant caldera has been acting a bit strangely over the past four decades. New research suggests 240 cubic miles of magma still exists within this supervolcano, but thankfully, a major eruption…

Neutron stars are having a renaissance, as far as space objects go. These ultra-dense collapsed stars are the source of last year’s most important astrophysical discovery, and they could supply the universe with much of its gold and other heavier elements. But, confusingly, many of their most important properties may…

Some of the Earth’s oldest rocks may have formed from the high temperatures of meteorite impacts, a new study reports.

There’s an exoplanet whose surface is so hot, it rips apart water molecules. It’s almost a star, but not quite; it’s an ultra-hot, Jupiter-like world located around 880 light-years from Earth.

Couples in the U.S. looking to either conceive or avoid pregnancy will now have a new tool available to them. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration announced it has permitted a digital birth control app to be marketed as such in the U.S. The app, called Natural Cycles, is the first medical device of its kind to…

A recent survey suggests that some people struggling with opioid addiction might be turning to a tragically desperate method to get more prescription painkillers: Hurting their own pets. And veterinarians themselves may be abusing opioids or helping to illegally sell them.

As it speeds away from the Sun, the New Horizons mission may be approaching a “wall.”

A team of experts injected an ailing orca calf with a dose of antibiotics, in a medical intervention that’s never been tried before on a wild killer whale.

A summer student has been removed from an experiment after NASA decided that a completely accurate note mentioning the President attached to an experiment that fell in a New Jersey field was a “misguided attempt to be lighthearted,” a NASA spokesperson told WNBC-TV.

One of the year’s most active meteor showers, the Perseids, will peak overnight Saturday into Sunday and Sunday into Monday, with 60 to 70 meteors per hour. But lots of Gizmodo readers live in cities. So, inspired by a friend’s tweet, I wondered—will city dwellers see the meteor shower?