Science News

An elderly woman in China is the first person known to have died from a strain of bird flu called H10N8, according to a new report of the case.

This weekend, the moon's fortnightly rotation cycle turns China's lunar rover Yutu (the Jade Rabbit) and its solar panels toward the sun once again ... but whether the rover wakes up or not remains to be seen.

For tourists wanting to experience Amsterdam's notorious Red Light District without necessarily participating in the -- ahem -- local offerings, a new museum offers a glimpse into the neighborhood's salacious history.

Bill Nye and Ken Ham had an old-fashioned debate on Tuesday. Nye was on the side of evolution, while Ham argued for creationism. The debate took place at the Creation Museum in Kentucky and was covered extensively by the...

Call it the Great Facebook Blizzard of 2014. While the northeastern U.S. is weathering some snow and slush this week, it probably won't be quite the blockbuster that some were expecting. Recently, a prediction that New Y...

What is underneath the surface of an asteroid? Astronomers are asking that question as it could lead to new insights into these celestial objects as well as planet formation. Using data collected by the European Southern...

IT IS unfair, but true, that beautiful people are more successful than ugly ones. Data indicate that this rule applies in both business and politics--and biological theory suggests the underlying reason is that beauty is...

A grisly wasting disease is attacking Pacific sea stars, causing their arms to crawl away from their bodies - but no one knows what causes it     

This week on The Physics Central Podcast I'm talking to Lucianne Walkowicz, an astrophysicist and artist who turned data from the Kepler space telescope into sound. Just as images from space allow us to see the universe,...

From matching wings on butterflies to the repeating six-point pattern of snowflakes, symmetries echo through nature, even down to the smallest building blocks of matter. Since the discovery of quarks, the building blocks...

Research has helped answer many questions about the link between evolution, health and medicine.

It seems likely that the relics of Charlemagne on display at a treasury in Germany are indeed the bones of the Frankish king, scientists say.

We all learn in high school science about the dual nature of light - that it exists as both waves and quantum particles called photons. It is this duality of light that enables the coherent transport of photons in lasers...

Prosthetic hands that feed signals directly into the nervous system could soon let people who have lost an arm reconnect with the world through touch     

DARPA -- the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for developing new, cutting-edge technologies for the military -- is making all of its open-source code freely and easily accessible online.

First mouse cells were turned into "totipotent" stem cells, and now early work suggests the same might have been achieved with human cells     

Nine years ago, Dennis Aabo Sørensen, of Denmark, lost his left arm in a fireworks accident and had to have it amputated. Now, for the first time, a bionic hand has restored his ability to feel again.

Danish amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen tests out the first prosthetic hand with sensory feedback.

Professor Silvestro Micera and colleagues have developed a bionic hand that restores a sense of touch.

The virtual currency is about more than money - the real innovation is what people are doing with the technology it is based on     

Early farmers boosted Earth's temperature by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) in the past 8,000 years, a new study suggests.

Wooly mammoths and other ice age beasts dined on nutritious, high-protein wildflower plants known as forbs, new research suggests.