Science

Real-life space exploration and big-screen science fiction will converge on Friday. As NASA prepares to launch Artemis II, the first crewed mission under the agency’s Artemis program and another step toward sending the first astronauts – Americans – to...

A landmark archaeological site in Chile may be thousands of years younger than originally thought, a new study claims. If validated, the finding would upend a key piece of evidence that humans reached South America about 14,500 years ago...

At first glance, Harvard Forest seems like an ordinary woodland. Oak trees shade the terrain among small shrubs and other trees, mostly maple, birch and beech. Fallen leaves coat the ground below. What makes this 1,600-hectare patch of land...

In a happy twist of fate, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope just witnessed a comet in the act of breaking apart. The chance of that happening while Hubble watched is extraordinarily minuscule. The findings published Wednesday in the journal Icarus.The...

Sharks off the coast of the Bahamas are getting into drugs like cocaine, caffeine and painkillers — or rather, drugs are getting into them. The contaminated blood of species including nurse sharks and Caribbean reef sharks reveals the damage...

Platypuses just got weirder.As if a mammal that lays eggs, senses electricity with its bill and fluoresces isn’t enough of a headscratcher, now it appears platypuses also share a feature with birds. Tiny pigment-filled packets in the mammals’ hair...

In one of the biggest surprises of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, its target asteroid, Bennu, turned out to be a jagged, rugged world covered in large boulders, with few of the smooth patches that earlier observations from Earth-based instruments had...

The data your smartwatch already collects could soon help flag an early warning sign for type 2 diabetes.Hidden in the patterns of heart rate, sleep and daily activity captured by everyday wearables are subtle clues that, when combined with...

A haunting whale song discovered on decades-old audio equipment could open up a new understanding of how the huge animals communicate, according to researchers who say it's the oldest such recording known.The song is that...

NASA has selected eight student teams as finalists in the 2026 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, giving them the resources to help address a critical challenge for U.S. aviation: maintenance.  Challenges facing the commercial aviation industry include a shortage of qualified maintenance workers and increasing demands to keep complicated aircraft running for...