Science

Science spans our understanding of how Earth and the cosmos work. Get the biggest news on biology, physics, space, dinosaurs, and more—along with the latest episodes of the Ask Us Anything and Weirdest Thing podcasts.

Latest in Science

A dinosaur called poposaurus walks near some trees. The dinosaur comes from a group of extinct relatives of the crocodile known as Poposauroidea.
Environment

Tracing the crocodiles’ curious evolutionary family tree

By Laura Baisas

A mosquito encased in yellow-hued amber.
Science

Millions of years ago, male mosquitoes may have been blood suckers too

By Laura Baisas

Completed JT-60SA experimental nuclear fusion facility in Japan
Technology

The world’s largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor is up and running

By Andrew Paul

A white axolotl in a tank. Axolotls are sometimes called the ‘Peter Pan of amphibians’ since they do not go through a traditional metamorphosis and keep larval traits like their signature gills.
Environment

Go (virtually) adopt an axolotl, the ‘Peter Pan’ of amphibians

By Laura Baisas

The last full moon of 2022 rises through a clear sky, past a string of festive lights. The moon is positioned at the center of a star made up of white Christmas lights.
Science

Two meteor showers and a bright Mercury to light up December’s sky

By Laura Baisas

A woman laying down in an fMRI machine. Patients in the study were examined using an fMRI machine such as this one. fMRI is a noninvasive way to measure and map activity in the brain.
Health

PTSD patients’ brains work differently when recalling traumatic experiences

By Laura Baisas

Closeup multicolor image of anthrobot
Technology

Meet ‘anthrobots,’ tiny bio-machines built from human tracheal cells

By Andrew Paul

A cicada sitting on a green leaf. The insect has bright orange eyes and large wings. Cicadas live underground for 13 or 17 years, before emerging to mate.
Environment

Fiber optic cables can pick up cicadas’ droning din

By Laura Baisas

A large rat stands on a tree trunk at night. The Vangunu giant rat is the first new species of rodent described from Solomon Islands in over 80 years.
Environment

A legendary Vangunu giant rat was finally caught on camera

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression showing the HH 1177 system. The young and massive stellar object glowing in the center is collecting matter from a dusty disc while also expelling matter in powerful jets. This is the first time a disc around a young star has been discovered in another galaxy.
Science

Astronomers spot an extragalactic star with a disc around it for the first time

By Laura Baisas

An orange California newt sits on a rock. The amphibians are endemic to California.
Environment

Female Taricha newts are more poisonous than males

By Laura Baisas

The sun
Science

Scientists want to use the sun’s gravity to communicate between stars

By Briley Lewis

How AI could help scientists spot ‘ultra-emission’ methane plumes faster—from space
Environment

How AI could help scientists spot ‘ultra-emission’ methane plumes faster—from space

By Andrew Paul

A newborn rhino calf stands under his mother. He is black and does not have his signature horns in yet.
Environment

A critically endangered Sumatran rhino named Delilah welcomes first calf

By Laura Baisas

A Celestron telescope in a pattern on a plain background
Gear

This editor-approved telescope is on sale for Cyber Monday

By Amanda Reed

Six African penguins standing on a rock. They have white plumage with black dots arranged in individual patterns on their chests.
Environment

African penguins may tell each other apart by the spots in their plumage

By Laura Baisas

An artist's rendering of a trilobite based on preserved soft body parts. The animal has two antennae protruding from its head and is oval-shaped.
Environment

10 new species of trilobite fossil rise from volcanic ash

By Laura Baisas

How to trap cosmic rays in a jar like it’s 1951
Science

How to trap cosmic rays in a jar like it’s 1951

By Bill Gourgey

The bones of sacrificed horses found in the courtyard of Casas del Turuñuelo site in Badajoz, Spain.
Science

Over 6,000 sacrificed animal bones tell a story of Iron Age Spain

By Laura Baisas

Even without brains, jellyfish learn from their mistakes
Science

Even without brains, jellyfish learn from their mistakes

By Popular Science Team

A mature Megasyllis nipponica with a developing female stolon.
Environment

Why these sea worms detach their butts to reproduce

By Laura Baisas

An aquatic nematode living in pond water among cyanobacteria. The small worms are sometimes trapped and eaten by carnivorous fungi.
Science

These tiny worms are no match for carnivorous fungi

By Laura Baisas

The full view of the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A vast region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, wraps around an infrared-dark cloud, which is so dense that it blocks the light from distant stars behind it. Intriguing needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen emission lack any uniform orientation. Researchers note the surprising extent of the ionized region, covering about 25 light-years.
Science

Chaotic region shines bright with 500,000 stars in new JWST image

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s concept of the Milky Way, which is a spiral galaxy that has a defined center. The spiral arms are made up of stars that can be wound tightly or loosely.
Science

Elliptical galaxies may just be spiral galaxies with their arms lobbed off

By Laura Baisas

A serotine bat with its mouth open, showing teeth. Serotine bats are widely spread throughout Europe and Asia and have a 15 inch wingspan.
Environment

Scientists are confounded by the sex lives of serontine bats

By Laura Baisas

Close-up of SpaceX Starship Falcon rockets igniting during liftoff
Technology

Another SpaceX Starship blew up

By Andrew Paul

A woman in a puffy coat points in a direction. Her small dog looks excitedly in that direction. They are sitting in a park with oranges leaves on green grass.
Science

Why dogs usually can’t tell what you’re pointing at

By Laura Baisas

NASA Psyche spacecraft surrounded by engineers in lab
Technology

NASA’s Psyche wins first deep space laser relay

By Andrew Paul

Computer simulation of Apollo 12 lunar lander effects on lunar surface
Technology

Watch NASA’s supercomputer simulation of the Apollo 12 lunar landing

By Andrew Paul

Two wild bonobos sit in a tree. Researchers examined pro-social behaviors of the smaller species of great ape in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Environment

Wild bonobos show surprising signs of cooperation between groups

By Laura Baisas

A bioluminescent sea cucumber called Scotoplanes or the “sea pig.”
Environment

Surprise! These sea cucumbers glow

By Laura Baisas

UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12 are the second and fourth most distant galaxy ever observed. The James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) helped confirm their existence within Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). They are shown here as near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated to visible-light colors.
Science

JWST spots two of the most distant galaxies astronomers have ever seen

By Laura Baisas

NASA ISS toolbag floating away above Earth
Technology

This tool bag is floating in space

By Andrew Paul

Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, photographed by a camera trap.
Environment

Elusive egg-laying mammal caught on camera for the first time

By Laura Baisas

Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting wavelength coverage, from 0.4 to 5 microns, reveals a vivid landscape of galaxies whose colors give clues to galaxy distances: The bluest galaxies are relatively nearby and often show intense star formation, as best detected by Hubble, while the redder galaxies tend to be more distant, or else contain copious amount of dust, as detected by JWST.
Science

‘Christmas tree’ galaxy shines in new image from Hubble and JWST

By Laura Baisas

A lateral view of Loncovilius carlsbergi. It is a six-limbed beetle less than an inch long, with two antennae protruding from its head.
Environment

These newfound beetles have male genitals shaped like a bottle opener

By Laura Baisas

Beyond the mitochrondrion: How did our cells get their other complex parts?
Science

Beyond the mitochrondrion: How did our cells get their other complex parts?

By Viviane Callier / Knowable Magazine

a person's hands typing on a laptop keyboard
Technology

How do chatbots work?

By Popular Science Team

antenna array
Technology

Why scientists used these radio transmitters to create artificial auroras

By Charlotte Hu

An Anna’s hummingbird with bright pink plumage flies near some leafy green trees.
Environment

Hummingbirds have two creative strategies for flying through tight spaces

By Laura Baisas

the surface of the moon revealing beautiful craters
Science

Here’s what a billion years does to glass on the moon

By Rahul Rao

A horizonal view of an injectable medication called Zepbound from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.
Health

What is Zepbound? Here’s how the newly FDA-approved weight loss drug works.

By Laura Baisas

NASA's Super Guppy rocket transport prop plane landing on tarmac in Alabama
Technology

Watch NASA’s bizarre and bulbous Super Guppy cargo plane touch down in Alabama

By Andrew Paul

A colorized image of the newly discovered satellite virus latched onto its helper virus. The helper virus is larger and shown in a dark blue, while the satellite virus is smaller and purple. It is attached at the "neck" of the helper virus.
Science

Virus observed sucking on another virus’ ‘neck’ for the first time

By Laura Baisas

Illustration in green, yellow, orange, and purple of big sauropod dinosaurs lifting weights in front of a prehistoric landscape
Science

The mystery of why some dinosaurs got so enormous

By Riley Black

Three moons and Jupiter, plus the NASA probe Juno.
Science

The Juno spacecraft spotted evidence of a salty ocean on Jupiter’s biggest moon

By Briley Lewis

A side view of a great white shark. Regional endothermy in fish has been seen in apex predators like the great white sharks or giant tuna.
Environment

Megalodon’s warm-blooded relatives are still circling the oceans today

By Laura Baisas

A louse on human hair under a microscope. Humans and lice have coevolved for thousands of years. The oldest human louse known to scientists is a 10,000 year-old specimen from Brazil.
Environment

What head lice can tell us about human migration

By Laura Baisas

An astronaut in a white spacesuit with Earth in the background.
Science

In space, your body is like a soda can

By Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

spider in a web
Science

Scientists made a claw machine from a dead spider

By Popular Science Team

How frozen baby corals and high-powered lasers could help dying reefs
Environment

How frozen baby corals and high-powered lasers could help dying reefs

By Brent M. Foster / Hakai Magazine

A gray asteroid against the black background of our solar system.
Science

Why the heck is Earth wet?

By Ben Guarino

This square astronomical image is divided horizontally by a waving line between a white-orange cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively blue-purple-pink upper portion. From the nebula in the bottom half of the image, an orange cloud shaped like a horsehead sticks out. In the bottom left of the image, a white round glow is visible. The clouds from the bottom half of the image shine purple/blue light into the upper half. The top of the image shows the black expanse of space. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing stars of varying sizes and colors. Blue stars are younger and red stars are older.
Science

Euclid telescope spies shimmering stars and galaxies in its first look at the ‘dark’ universe

By Laura Baisas

Astronomers found the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays (in a galaxy dubbed UHZ1) using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope. X-ray emission is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole. This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. These images show the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 that UHZ1 is located behind, in X-rays from Chandra and infrared data from JWST, as well as close-ups of the black hole host galaxy UHZ1.
Science

Farthest black hole ever recorded by astronomers is nearly as old as our universe

By Laura Baisas

Close-up of Roman follis coins found off Italian coast
Technology

Divers recovered a treasure trove of more than 30,000 ancient, bronze coins off the Italian coast

By Andrew Paul

A sample of Asteroid Bennu is put on public display for the first time at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, on November 3, 2023. A sample collected from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu contains abundant water and carbon, NASA revealed, offering more evidence for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. The small black rock is located in a glass viewing pain.
Science

Smithsonian unveils a very small sample of the 4.5-billion-year-old Bennu asteroid

By Laura Baisas

A baby loggerhead turtle pokes out of a shell on the sand. Its head and front flippers are out of the shell, with the lower half remaining inside.
Environment

Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks

By Laura Baisas

Screenshot of star from NASA+ show 'Space Out'
Technology

NASA’s free streaming platform launches this week. Here’s what to watch.

By Andrew Paul

An illustration of Ekgmowechashala, the last primate to inhabit North America before humans. The animal has a white furry face, with a pink nose, and large dark eyes like a lemur. It is sitting in a leafy tree.
Science

North America was once home to some unusual wild monkeys

By Laura Baisas

The silver structure of the International Space Station against the black backdrop of space.
Science

What mouse embryos can tell us about the future of pregnancies in space

By Jon Kelvey

Test subject tilting in spatial disorientation machine
Technology

These wearables might protect astronauts from space ‘death spirals’

By Andrew Paul

A large asteroid with a smaller asteroid orbiting it. This image shows the “moonrise” of the satellite as it emerges from behind asteroid Dinkinesh as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager. This image was taken by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft at 12:55 p.m. EDT on November 1, 2023, within a minute of closest approach, from a range of approximately 270 miles. From this perspective, the satellite is behind the primary asteroid. The image has been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast.
Science

First NASA images from Lucy’s flyby reveal that ‘Dinky’ is not alone

By Laura Baisas

The particle accelerator on a one-cent coin.
Science

How physicists built the world’s smallest particle accelerator

By Rahul Rao

The synthetic melanin is being applied to Inflamed skin. Just under the surface of the skin are green free radicals, also known as ROS, or "reactive oxygen species."
Health

Lab-made ‘super melanin’ speeds up healing and boosts sun protection

By Laura Baisas

Explore Science