When you’re flying around in space, where there’s no air or wind resistance, aerodynamics aren’t important. That’s why the Star Trek Borg ship is just a giant cube and still works just fine. But when ships are also visiting planets with atmospheres, aerodynamics do come into play—and apparently neither the Rebels nor…
A series of heartbreaking investigative stories published Wednesday by Reveal and The Texas Tribune highlight the disturbing conditions many undocumented children have been allegedly forced to endure in privately run shelters set up to house them as they await proceedings to determine whether they can stay in the…
Current prosthetic limbs aren’t yet capable of transmitting complex sensations like texture or pain to the user, but a recent breakthrough by scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in which a synthetic layer of skin on an artificial hand transmitted feelings of pain directly to the user, takes us one step…
With yet another Jurassic Park movie headed to theaters, it’s the perfect time for busybody scientists to shatter our conceptions of how dinosaurs looked and acted. The latest dino truth bomb comes courtesy of a new study published Wednesday in PLOS One. It suggests that most dinosaurs, including the fearsome…
Ötzi the Iceman is the gift that keeps on giving. Found embedded in a glacier in 1991, the 5,300-year-old mummy has offered unprecedented insights into Copper Age Europe. A new analysis of Ötzi’s equipment shows what he was up to in the hours before an archer drove an arrow straight into his back.
It would be silly to think we completely understand our universe, given how small the Earth is compared to the vastness of the cosmos. But from here on our tiny planet, it appears that much of the universe is missing. And I’m not just talking about dark matter. Regular stuff seems to be missing, too.
A towering invasive plant capable of scarring anyone unlucky enough to touch its toxic sap is cropping back up in the U.S. And for the first time ever, it’s been spotted in the state of Virginia.
We’ve seen supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies tearing stars to shreds. We’ve detected the energy wave from relatively tiny black holes slamming together to create a wobble in space-time a billion light-years away. But what about the medium-sized black holes in between these extremes?
Your smartphone has a particle detector on it, and scientists want you to help them uncover how the universe really works and maybe even discover the true nature of dark matter. There are just a few bugs to work out.
There are plenty of bad (and cool!) tattoos out there, but few might ever be as regrettable as the one that apparently caused an immune disorder and years of chronic pain in a UK woman. The bizarre medical tale, detailed by her doctors Monday in BMJ Case Reports, is apparently the first recorded instance of such a…
It was 50 years ago this month that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin. In what is now the first study of its kind, a team of specialists has conducted a systematic review of the medical care he received during the critical hours following the shooting. Their findings offer unprecedented details about…
More than 2,000 academics, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and at least 1,300 professors, have signed a letter denouncing the Department of Homeland Security’s policy separating immigrant children from their families at the border.
For 15 years, Erez Benari’s struggle with his type 2 diabetes had been a losing one. A software engineer at Microsoft in Seattle, Washington, Benari had stuck to a restrictive diet that kept him off most carbs, along with regular insulin shots. But still, his high blood sugar levels never dropped, while his health…
You might have a pretty rigid understanding of the way stuff should look, at the most basic level. It should have a nucleus that is orbited by electrons. The nucleus should have protons and neutrons, inside each of which reside three quarks.
Earlier today, President Donald Trump said he’ll be directing the Pentagon to create the US Space Force, which would become the sixth independent branch of the US military. The move is meant to help the US keep pace with its rivals, but experts question the need for an entirely new military wing.
Most of us know that spending too much time at loud rock concerts can be bad for our hearing later on. But a new study published Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery suggests that kids as young as nine can be at risk of hearing loss from an unexpected source: their smartphones and tablets.
There are lots of incredible things you can do with data. Like make this incredible animation of the Martian surface, for example.
Meet DeepCube, an artificially intelligent system that’s as good at playing the Rubik’s Cube as the best human master solvers. Incredibly, the system learned to dominate the classic 3D puzzle in just 44 hours and without any human intervention.
Venus might seem rather Earthly, given its similar size and presence of a thick, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere. But the more scientists observe it, the more surprises the second planet from the Sun throws at us.
DNA from a 22,000-year-old fossilized panda skull suggests an entirely separate lineage of giant pandas once roamed the area that is now southern China.
