Science News

Humans are just the latest in a long line of hominid species that have emerged in the past six million years.

The peak of the Lyrid meteor shower will occur just after midnight on Tuesday, and April's stargazing event can be viewed in the Northern and Southern hemisphere. NASA and Slooh will provide a Lyrid meteor shower live st...

Animals with larger brains may have more self-control than creatures with smaller noodles, suggesting that feeding ecology and brain size may have influenced cognitive evolution, researchers say.

This year's long, brutal winter may mean the country's headed for pollen eruption and a harsh allergy season in the spring, doctors say.

Ancient microbial DNA on fossil teeth has opened a fresh window on our ancestors, revealing that civilisation has altered our mouth flora for the worse (full text available to subscribers)

Modern humans first arose between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how the modern human lineage then dispersed out of Africa has long been controversial. Now researchers say there were multiple dispersals...

Neanderthals were remarkably less genetically diverse than modern humans, with Neanderthal populations typically smaller and more isolated, researchers say.

As joyful and gorgeous it may be, spring brings its own share of seasonal maladies, and nothing can kill the buzz of spring like an allergy or a bacterial infection. Here are a few things you should watch out for this se...

Stars have been exploding for billions of years, and some of those explosions are so massive that we can see them with the naked eye here on earth. Novae and supernovae (novae's more explosive older sibling), are the res...

Radioactive krypton could help researchers track down ancient air bubbles trapped in the world's oldest ice, filling a crucial gap in Earth's climate history.

The 16-year-old boy who survived a flight across the Pacific Ocean stowed away in an airplane's wheel well has everyone wondering just how he achieved this remarkable feat.

Cosmic rays hitting Earth can be trapped in ice, producing radioactive Krypton-81. Scientists have accurately dated a million year old sample through melting ancient ice, and passing the ancient air through an Atom Trap ...

At stake in the fierce 17th-century debate over a mathematical concept was nothing less than our modern world, says Amir Alexander in Infinitesimal

The Bard's continuing appeal lies in his intuitive understanding of how the human mind works (full text available to subscribers)

It's the classic party prank: smack your beer bottle on top of someone else's and watch as their bottle wells over with a seemingly endless river of foam. As it turns out, the prank has some... --

In a move that's likely to sow panic among parents of teenagers, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has approved the sale of Palcohol, a powdered alcohol.

Editor in chief Mariette DiChristina introduces the May 2014 issue of Scientific American --

An 18th-century painting that was stolen from a church in Poland two decades ago was recovered after it turned up for sale on eBay, federal authorities say.

Kyle Taylor, a founder of Glowing Plant, splices firefly genes into plants and wants to demystify the process by showing you how to do it at home

Stem cells -- the body's master cells -- demonstrate a bizarre property never before seen at a cellular level, according to a study published today from scientists at the University of Cambridge. The property -- known as...

The recent discovery of the Higgs boson has confirmed theories about the origin of mass and, with it, offered the potential to explain other scientific mysteries.

Stem cell treatments are set to go mainstream as a UK consortium ramps up production of red blood cells from embryonic stem cells with plans to try it on human patients for the first time in 2016. Delivering blood transf...