Earth wasn't created until more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang. In some lucky places, life could have arisen almost right away.
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The ten greatest ideas in science form the bedrock of modern biology, chemistry, and physics. Everyone should be familiar with them.
From ancient Greek cosmology to today's mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, explore the relentless quest to understand the Universe's invisible forces.
Sweet, bitter, salty, sour. These are the four basic tastes we were taught in grade school. But there is a fifth: umami. And it's everywhere.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans use positrons — the antimatter equivalent of an electron — to locate cancer in the body.
Beer's flavor begins to change as soon as it is packaged. Are cans or bottles better at preserving flavor?
Pain relievers like acetaminophen and ibuprofen are made with chemicals derived from oil. Scientists have shown how to make them from trees.
The new material may make marine uranium extraction economically feasible.
As cells divide, they must copy all of their chromosomes once and only once, or chaos would ensue. How do they do it? Key controls happen well before replication even starts.
All biological systems are wildly disordered. Yet somehow, that disorder enables plant photosynthesis to be nearly 100% efficient.
In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.
Our cosmic home, planet Earth, has been through a lot over the past 4.5 billion years. Here are some of its most spectacular changes
Your mentors made time for you. Now, go and make time for others.
More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
At the turn of the millennium, a physicist fooled the global scientific community with the greatest discovery that never existed.
Scientists will be able to make detailed "Claymation-like" movies of chemical reactions.
According to the CDC, 50 countries worldwide have drinkable tap water. But look closer, and the picture is more nuanced.
Chemical changes inside Mars' core caused it to lose its magnetic field. This, in turn, caused it to lose its oceans. But how?
From the explosions themselves to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics.
Rocks and minerals don’t simply reflect light. They play with it and interact with light as both a wave and a particle.
Plagues, war, and genocide were literally frozen in time.
Whenever someone waxes poetic about terraforming alien worlds, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethical implications of the proposal.
The familiar terrain of solids, liquids, and gases gives way to the exotic realms of plasmas and degenerate matter.
Nanofabricators could quickly synthesize whatever we need, molecule by molecule.
"Groupthink" gets a bad rap. In reality, we need groups to focus our thinking and to build on the ideas of others.
Bathybius haeckelii was briefly thought to be the link between inorganic matter and organic life.
On Earth, carbon can form millions of compounds, while silicon is largely stuck inside rocks. But elsewhere, silicon could form the basis of life.
It’s early days, but if the efforts can be efficiently scaled-up, such biological recycling could put a dent in the plastic waste problem.