The mystery of why galaxies formed early in the history of the universe give birth to more stars than modern ones has been solved. An abundance of dense, cold gas fueled rapid star formation in …

Space is a pretty empty place. But it’s not completely empty, as a new map of the interstellar space surrounding the 1,000 light-years around the sun shows.
Using the light from 1,857 stars, a team of …

Meet Inuk, a 4,000-year-old man known from a tuft of hair found in Greenland permafrost.
In those frozen strands, enough DNA was preserved to sequence the first ancient-human genome and confirm an unexpected ancient migration from …

You’ve undoubtedly seen the smudge of the Orion Nebula hanging just below his belt thousands of times, but the most beautiful image yet of the celestial body was just released Wednesday.
The European Southern Observatory’s new …

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens …

With feathers that resonate at precisely 1,500 hertz, the male club-winged manakin is perhaps the bird world’s most perfectly tuned example of sexual selection.
By pinning down the frequency, researchers have completed a long investigation into …

A watched pot never boils, but an electrically charged pot sometimes freezes.
sciencenewsA study in the Feb. 5 Science reports that water can freeze at different temperatures depending on whether the surface it rests on is …

I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to wake up this morning to find that Sultan Kösen is now using a photo from my interview with him as his Facebook photo.
I met Kösen last …

Just a week at high altitudes can cause sustained weight loss, suggesting that a mountain retreat could be a viable strategy for slimming down.
Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 …

Another week, another colorful feathered dinosaur. Hot on the heels of a recent report identifying pigments in fossilized dino feathers and filaments (SN Online: 1/27/10), a different team of scientists says that it has mapped …

Federal court hearings continued Tuesday on a lawsuit that could transform biotechnology in the United States by eliminating gene patents.
The case hinges around the claims of Utah-based Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2, a pair …

The X marks the spot of a suspected head-on collision between two asteroids imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s new-and-improved Wide Field Camera.
If it’s confirmed by further observations, it would be the first time that …

SEATTLE — It’s easy being green for a sea slug that has stolen enough genes to become the first animal shown to make chlorophyll like a plant. Shaped like a leaf itself, the slug Elysia …

Scientists have unearthed a completely new species of spider hiding in sand dunes on the Israel-Jordan border. With a legspan that stretches 5.5 inches, the spider, called Cerbalus aravensis, is the biggest of its type …

Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates schwacked  the Air Force’s plans to develop a new stealth bomber that would enter service in 2018. Now, it looks like the spirit of Gen. Curtis “bombs away” …

Jeanne Calment (February 21, 1875 – August 4, 1997) Jeanne Cament was born in Arles, France, to a well-to-do family, her close family members also unsurprisingly lived to an advanced age: her brother, …

The world’s oldest known living tree, a conifer that first took root at the end of the last Ice Age, has been discovered in Sweden, researchers say.
The visible portion of the 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) “Christmas tree” …

On October 13, 2000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water bottles, and scattered on foot across the …

An artist from Pittsburgh named Cliff Maynard, that’s also a tattoo artist, is making portraits by using marijuana joint ends. The portraits are of famous people like Bob Marley, Snoop Dog and John Lennon, to …

A Sumatran tigress and her cubs took a special interest in a World Wildlife Federation camera, sniffing and possibly licking it during a brief sequence released in late December.
The video was released as a prelude …