Science News

Crucial to the program? Online tech companies. This was a bad week for spies, and a great week to find out how we were spied on. Following revelations Wednesday that Verizon handed over millions of call records to the Na...

Really: Why would they bother telling us the truth? Palantir Technologies has denied, sort of, that it is involved in the massive PRISM scandal, in which the National Security Agency was found to have gotten access to ma...

Mind the 3,400-ton truss! The Problem When the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, was built in 1925, it wasn't designed to carry 30,000 vehicles a day. Or to hold back a slow landslide. But by the 1980s, cracks were fo...

All the latest on newscientist.com: US spying on its people, nuclear bomb tests show brain regeneration, when atheists get religion, glowing plants, and more

"Today's special meat is a chop of Grévy's zebra flank, fresh out of the exercise amplifier and seared in giant squid fat." The era of exotic meats grown to order--with no animals killed in the process--could be on its ...

The US government is spying on its own citizens' phone calls and internet data. So what can these huge datasets tell them about us?

Hey Palantir Technologies: Are you reading this right now? Last night we learned about PRISM, a classified National Security Agency program that involves huge, wide-ranging data pulls from major tech companies including ...

Wisps of matter from an exploded star float through a nebula glowing with newborns in the latest view from a pair of NASA space telescopes

Some juvenile galaxies in the early universe may have grown abnormally big, finally forming gigantic stars that exploded to create massive black holes

Head's YouTek Graphene Speed Pro is one of the first racquets to deliver both crushing power and precise control. For years, racquet designers at Head struggled with the same problem: They couldn't increase the power of ...

"A-UG!," a racing "oooog": Nicaragua! After a century as an only child, the Panama Canal is about to get a sister. Nicaragua announced recently that it is awarding China a contract to build an alternative to the Panama C...

People backing a crowd-funded project to genetically engineer a glowing plant will receive its seeds. Is it setting a dangerous precedent or harmless fun?

Religious faith can help believers cope with stress - now it seems that trusting in science might do the same for non-believers

A new exhibition, Visions of the Universe, reveals how technology has altered perceptions of the cosmos and our place in it - see our favourite images

Carbon dating brain cells provides conclusive evidence that part of the adult human brain constantly renews itself - and that this neurogenesis persists in old age

Collapsing gas clouds in the very young universe could have formed many "obese" black holes, pouring out energy that is still visible today

Music to wash clothes by, laundry emergencies, Dickkopf determinism, and more (full text available to subscribers)