Scientists track down a puzzling early burst of oxygen on Earth.
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Philosophers and scientists spent millennia arguing about the nature of light. It turned out to be stranger than anyone imagined.
Starting just about now, leaves start changing color from north to south, high to low, light to dark.
If it wasn’t a singularity, how small could it have been? Today, when you look out in any direction as far as the laws of physics allow us to see, the […]
Paradoxically, we lose wars because the world is peaceful and the U.S. is powerful.
Longevity gets a new motto: location, location, location.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes is often labeled a quintessential Spanish artist, but his allegiance may well have lied with the French Enlightenment instead.
Coherentism accepts that circular reasoning is probably the best any of us can do.
Both made monumental contributions that were far ahead of their time. It’s hard to believe, but the idea that the Universe was dominated not by normal matter but rather by dark […]
A strange philosophical thought experiment forces us to ask if the world can be completely described in physical terms.
This freshly unearthed image drastically alters the meaning of one of the artist’s most celebrated works.
Hubble, our greatest space-based observatory today, is just the beginning. The Hubble Space Telescope has been astronomy’s most revolutionary observatory in history. The stars and galaxies we see today didn’t […]
It could analyze a photo of the Martian surface in just five seconds. NASA scientists need 40 minutes.
A new model addresses a longstanding problem: where do quasars get the fuel they need to outshine entire galaxies?
It walked enough miles to nearly circle the Earth twice.
A puzzling — and huge — break in the geological record finally might be explained.
Medical science can save lives, but should it do so at the cost of quality of life?
In Louisiana, high school starts at 7:30 am. Research shows that is at least an hour too early.
MIT researchers design glue that mimics the sticky substance barnacles use to cling to rocks.
We should not romanticize ancient Egyptian culture.
Galaxies can have regions both hotter and colder than the background radiation of the Universe. When we talk about the depths of space, we get this picture in our heads […]
The design could help restore motor function after stroke, enhance virtual gaming experiences.
These enormous centipedes are straight out of science fiction.
Sometimes, new combinations of preexisting things revolutionize life.
Let’s celebrate the progress, but put the cork back in the champagne bottle.
The world is full of great mysteries. This is one of them.
Galaxies can die if their star-making stuff is lost. But now it can find its way back.
Theoretically, we know what happened on the red planet. Here’s how we’ll find out whether we’re right. When it comes to the worlds beyond Earth in our Solar System, it’s only […]
Surrounding Earth is a powerful magnetic field created by swirling liquid iron in the planet’s core. Earth’s magnetic field may be nearly as old as the Earth itself – and […]
How the brain decides what to store and what to forget.