Science News

Exercise confers huge health benefits, so why does it often feel like such a chore? Evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman explains the paradox (full text available to subscribers)

The 220-story, 2,750-foot, 90-day Sky City construction project is a go. We've been following Chinese construction firm Broad Sustainable Building's ambitious plan to build the world's tallest skyscraper for a while now,...

-- Nobel contender sees multiple cosmic mysteries -- New Telescope Strategy Could Resolve Dark-Matter Mystery, Scientists Say -- Do dark-matter discs envelop galaxies? -- CERN Council Updates European Strategy for Partic...

Verizon has given the U.S. National Security Agency information on all its telephone calls for months. But it's not the calls' content the government is looking at--it's their context. For the past three months, Verizon ...

Bryan Henderson hails from Edinburgh Scotland. He's 18 years old and recently became a god. Henderson won the collaborative, cube-destroying game Curiosity--What's Inside the Cube, and he's reportedly still a bit baffled...

A survey of planet-hosting stars offers some of the first real-world evidence that ageing suns shred inner planets, offering a clue to Earth's eventual fate

Watch the wiggling tail of sun-grazing comet Lovejoy give unprecedented insight into the solar magnetic field

A vortex seen in a disc around a young star may solve the mystery of how planets grow from grains of dust without first spiralling in to destruction

This is the first almost-practical application of temporal cloaking ... but it might work too well. Electrical engineers at Purdue University have found a way to make your data disappear completely--into holes in time. T...

All the latest on newscientist.com: why humans hate exercise, ancient Egyptian failure to flee floods, carbon emissions make Earth greener, and more

A project at MIT lets you get to a web page by tracing the pattern of the code with your smartphone

From DARPA, some very tiny suction. Five years ago, DARPA challenged researchers to create a vacuum system smaller than a cubic centimeter and powered by just a quarter-Watt of energy. This week, DARPA announced the prog...

Male superb lyrebirds are famous for their vocal mimicry, but they also match their songs to carefully chosen dance steps

A four-part series on the clean technologies that will set us free brightcove.createExperiences(); Our series follows Editor-in-Chief Jacob Ward on a trip across the country and around the world to see firsthand the idea...

In two weeks, tens of thousands of people will fill the streets of Toronto for the seventh annual Luminato Festival to see beautiful works of art, hear great music, and enjoy the sights of a world-class city. What they d...

Construction companies in the Rustbelt tackle the problem of old, abandoned houses with a new vision for recycling; board by board and brick by brick.

Google will soon use social media to tailor the map it shows you. A useful addition in many respects, but will it risk narrowing your view of the world?

Wave your hand to change the music. The music in the other room. Imagine the Kinect. Now imagine you can use gestures like you'd use with the Kinect to control anything--appliances, lights, gadgets, whatever. Now imagine...

Over a billion years ago, the ancestors of plants ate bacteria and gained a crucial new ability. A tiny alga with a mouth could show how they did it

Scientists can now identify people by their breath -- just like a fingerprint