Science News

(Geological Society of America) Dust begets life, and Earth's atmosphere 300 million years ago was perhaps the dustiest of all time, with large consequences for carbon cycling and the climate system. In a new paper for G...

A representative survey of 900 people in the US reveals that many are more concerned about climate change since the pope issued his call to action

A team of physicists led by Stephen Jardin of the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has discovered a mechanism that prevents the electrical current flowing through fusion plasma from ...

In fusion reactor designs, superconductors (which suffer no resistive power loss) are used to generate the magnetic fields that confine the 100 million degree C plasma. While increasing magnetic field strength offers pot...

A middle-age woman in Africa who became infected with Ebola suffered a stroke during her bout with the virus but managed to survive both maladies, according to a new report of her case.

Theobroma cacao, the tree that produces chocolate, first diverged from its nearest relatives about 10 million years ago, new research suggests.

A congenital heart defect went undetected for nearly seven decades.

For more than 60 years, fusion scientists have tried to use "magnetic bottles" of various shapes and sizes to confine extremely hot plasmas, with the goal of producing practical fusion energy. But turbulence in the plasm...

The "obesity paradox" may really just be all about cardiovascular fitness, one researcher argues.

Magnetic reconnection, which occurs when magnetic lines of force break apart and reconnect with a violent burst of energy, gives rise to many beautiful and powerful phenomena in the natural world. These include solar fla...

This oddly adorable cat carries a genetic secret.

Swarming behavior has always fascinated physicists, biologists, and behavioral scientists alike--as well as anyone who's seen a sky-darkening flock of starlings twist into its mesmerizing shapes. It's hard not to wonder ...

Octopuses are highly intelligent, and thanks to their amazing, neuron-filled tentacles, they can do humanlike tasks such as unscrewing jars and lids.

A newly discovered rocky body is more than three times more distant than Pluto. It and its companions could help solve a mystery about the outer solar system

Powerful smartwatch prototypes can guess what you're up to by tracking the electrical signals on your skin and the muscles in your wrist

Mexico has ruled that banning personal use of cannabis violates the human right to free development of one's personality. Will other countries follow suit?

Each year, Singularity University descends on San Diego's Hotel Del Coronado for Exponential Medicine, a four-day conference exploring how technology is driving monumental change in health and medicine. (Go here for a gr...

Global warming has become a 1-degree Celsius reality, making progress at climate talks in Paris even more imperative --

Scientists have discovered a way to authenticate or identify any object by generating an unbreakable ID based on atoms.

Ben Carson thinks the Egyptian pyramids were built by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain. But he isn't the only person to ignore the overwhelming evidence about why the pyramids were built.

SeaWorld San Diego, long known for its live killer-whale shows, will begin phasing out the performances next year in favor of conservation-based shows.

This week in San Diego, Singularity University is holding its Exponential Medicine Conference, a look at how technologists are redesigning and rebuilding today's broken healthcare system. (Editor's note: Singularity Hub....