Science News

Potential solutions to big problems continue to arise from research that is revealing how materials behave at the smallest scales.

A scientist in a crisp, white lab coat and protective eye goggles sits behind a safety shield, controller in hand. In front of him is a powerful titanium-sapphire laser, aimed at a crystal lens. His thumb gently squeezes...

(CAGE - Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Climate and Environment) Close to 30.000 high definition images of the deep Arctic Ocean floor were captured on a recent research cruise. They give an exclusive insight into the mos...

"We're here to inspire filmmakers," says Rick Loverd, Program Manager of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're here to provide mainstream media content creators wit...

On Tuesday night the clocks will stand still at 23:59:60 to keep our time in sync with the universe. But does our high-speed world demand a new solution? (full text available to subscribers)

Some organisms’ internal compasses relay direction via magnetic iron crystals, but in wood mice and birds, a totally different compass seems to rely on quantum processes --

Ancient supernatural practices may explain why two Grecian graves contain skeletons that are pinned down with heavy objects and rocks, almost as though people wanted to trap the bodies underground, a new article finds.

The ancient Greeks sometimes placed heavy objects, such as rocks and ceramic vessels, on the bodies of people they feared to be revenants, or the living dead.

What's white and blind and hairy all over? A yeti, of course! Or rather, a yeti crab.

An ancestor of modern-day turtles, a shell-less creature with a long tail once puttered around an ancient lake, likely munching on insects and worms with its peglike teeth, a new study finds.

Crowds of blind, hairy crabs huddle together around life-giving vents and seem to cultivate bacteria on their coats in the icy depths of the Southern Ocean

Corals that switch from green to deep red when exposed to ultraviolet light could provide a new toolkit for biomedical imaging

Scientists have finally seen the face of the ancient worm Hallucigenia, which leaves fossils so bizarre researchers once thought its top was its bottom and its back was its front. And it's a doozy, with a circular tooth-...

The discovery of a relic inside our cells is shaking up our understanding of the origin of life - a marriage of RNA and proteins may be how it all really began (full text available to subscribers)

The concentration of a protein in the blood could allow doctors to screen people for a cancer that has one of the worst survival rates

After a two-month pause and potential game over, construction on the biggest telescope on Mauna Kea will resume - but protests continue

An electronics technology that uses the "spin" - or magnetization - of atomic nuclei to store and process information promises huge gains in performance over today's electron-based devices. But getting there is proving c...

The latest sky maps produced by Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope combine seven years of observations. Maps from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope literally show the universe in a different light. Today Fermi’s Large A...

People who go tanning at gyms or beauty shops may have riskier tanning habits than those who go to tanning salons, new research finds.

A new report used interviews with more than 146,000 people around the world to rank 145 countries by the well being of their residents.

A jellyfish’s strange shortcut to symmetry allows injured animals to reorganize their remaining limbs instead of having to regrow them --

Alien world may help explain how gas giants form and shape their planetary systems --