Science News

With the help of a pair of crystals and a wooden stick, the Vikings may have been able to use the sun to navigate across the North Atlantic even after sunset.

Sea turtles face extinction as enormous fishing nets drown the animals by the thousands.

The arrival of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, carrying three new crew members to the International Space Station, or ISS, was delayed after it failed to fire its steering thrusters for a planned engine maneuver in orbit, NA...

Cognitive decline is a myth, say Michael Ramscar and Harald Baayen. The research behind the idea uses flawed models of how we learn in the real world (full text available to subscribers)     

Shimmering rainbow colors were captured on camera above Venus, marking the first time a so-called "glory" was pictured on another planet besides Earth. The phenomenon also pointed to a mystery in the hothouse planet's at...

The newfound object, called 2012 VP113, joins the dwarf planet Sedna as a resident of a far-flung region called the "inner Oort Cloud." Further, 2012 VP113 and Sedna may have been pulled into their odd orbits by a big, u...

Patches of cells in the outer layer of the cortex are disorganized in the brains of autistic children.

The Automated Planet Finder telescope has been working tirelessly day and night, seeking out alien worlds – and its haul of planets is just beginning     

A Christian tattoo has been discovered high on the inner thigh of a mummified Sudanese woman. New images released by the British Museum show the ancient ink, which dates back to 1,300 years ago.

Bamboo isn't the only food pandas crave -- the furry giants also have a sweet tooth, a new study finds.

Using stones to raise water in a pitcher isn't just the stuff of fiction: experiments show that crows have an understanding of water displacement     

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered a bacterium to synthesize pinene, a hydrocarbon produced by trees that could potentially replace high-energy fuels, suc...

Revelations of the extent of government surveillance have thrown a spotlight on the security -- or lack thereof -- of our digital communications. Even today's encrypted data is vulnerable to technological progress. What ...

Belgium is scheduled to destroy its entire stockpile of illegal ivory next month, joining the United States, China and several other countries in taking a stand against wildlife trafficking.

Northeastern University professor of pharmaceutical sciences, Tania Konry, has developed a single instrument that can conduct a wide range of biological scans in a fraction of the time and cost of industry standard equip...

Plants that absorb metals from the soil could clean up old mines and allow farmers to harvest valuable resources without ruining the environment still more (full text available to subscribers)     

Nanotechnology is advancing tools likened to Star Trek's "tricorder" that perform on-the-spot chemical analysis for a range of applications including medical testing, explosives detection and food safety.

An article in Nature reviewing developments in quantum cryptography describes how we can keep our secrets secret even when faced with the double challenge of mistrust and manipulation.

On March 22, 2014, a deadly landslide struck in Washington State, about 50 miles north of Seattle on the banks of the Stillaguamish River.

Quintessence and phantom fields, two hypotheses formulated using data from satellites, such as Planck and WMAP, are among the many theories that try to explain the nature of dark energy. Now researchers from Barcelona an...

The scar of the deadly landslide that devastated a small community near Oso, Wash., over the weekend can be seen from space.

It is not just for video games. With Oculus Rift, Facebook wants to plug you in to the real world with a totally immersive experience