From asteroids capable of destroying entire species to supernovae that could exterminate life on Earth, outer space has no shortage of forces that could wreak havoc on our planet. But there's something in space that is even more...

Without water, a human can only survive for about 100 hours. But there's a creature so resilient that it can go without it for decades. This 1-millimeter animal can survive both the hottest and coldest environments on earth, and can even...

There's a game of Tetris happening on a global scale: The playing space is planet Earth, and all those pesky, stacking blocks represent carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas that is piling up ever more rapidly as we burn the fossil fuels...

How likely is it that a massive asteroid will do major damage to Earth and its inhabitants? What about the sun -- is it dying out anytime soon? And the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way -- should we be worried about...

Every year, the world uses 35 billion barrels of oil. This massive scale of fossil fuel dependence pollutes the earth, and it won't last forever. On the other hand, we have abundant sun, water and wind, which are all renewable energy...

The International Space Station is roughly the size of a six-bedroom house and weighs more than 320 cars -- it's so large that no single rocket could have lifted it into orbit. Instead, it was assembled piece by piece while hurtling...

Prolonged space travel plays a severe toll on the human body: microgravity impairs muscle and bone growth, and high doses of radiation cause irreversible mutations. As we seriously consider the human species becoming space-faring, a big...

While comets were historically thought to be ill omens of war and famine, recent science has revealed that these celestial wonders actually contain amino acids, the building blocks of life on Earth. Justin Dowd explores the implications...

If you were to orbit the Earth, you'd experience the feeling of free fall, not unlike what your stomach feels before a big dive on a roller coaster. With a little help from Sir Isaac Newton, Matt J. Carlson explains the basic forces...

Water covers over 70% of the Earth, cycling from the oceans and rivers to the clouds and back again. It even makes up about 60% of our bodies. But in the rest of the solar system, liquid water is almost impossible to find. So how did our...

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik and, with it, an international space race. The United States and the Soviet Union rushed to declare dominance of space for 18 years, until the two countries agreed to a...

In the first two lessons of this series on space-time, we've dealt with objects moving at constant speeds, with straight world lines, in space-time. But what happens when you throw gravity into the mix? In this third and final lesson,...

As the Earth's surface temperature gradually rises, it has become vital for us to predict the rate of this increase with as much precision as possible. In order to do that, scientists need to understand more about aerosols and clouds....

About 66 million years ago, a terrible extinction event wiped out the dinosaurs. But it wasn't the only event of this kind -- extinctions of various severity have occurred throughout the Earth's history -- and are still happening all...

Light always travels at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. But if you're in motion too, you're going to perceive it as traveling even faster -- which isn't possible! In this second installment of a three-part series on space-time,...

Space is where things happen. Time is when things happen. And sometimes, in order to really look at the universe, you need to take those two concepts and mash them together. In this first lesson of a three-part series on space-time,...

Energy is neither created nor destroyed - and yet the global demand for it continues to increase. But where does energy come from, and where does it go? Joshua M. Sneideman examines the many ways in which energy cycles through our...

We've all had the experience: you're walking across a soft carpet, you reach for the doorknob and - ZAP. But what causes this trademark jolt of static electricity? Anuradha Bhagwat sheds light on the phenomenon by examining the nature of...

Published scientific studies can motivate research, inspire products, and inform policy. However, recent studies that examined dozens of published pharmaceutical papers managed to replicate the results of less than 25% of them - and...

Our bodies function necessarily under the presence of gravity; how blood pumps, a sense of balance and bone growth are all due to life in a world where gravity is an inescapable reality. Armed with experiments from neuroscientists David...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, aka NASA, has been at the forefront of science, technology, and space exploration since 1958. Its work remains an inspiration to millions of people around the world.

Earth and Mars were likely generated by regular collisions between giant Moon-to-Mars-size rocks, rather than tiny pebbles clumping together.

There's a lot of talk these days about when and how we might all move to Mars. But what would it actually be like to live there? Mari Foroutan details the features of Mars that are remarkably similar to those of Earth — and those that...

The Arctic may seem like a frozen and desolate environment where nothing ever changes. But the climate of this unique and remote region can be both an early indicator of the climate of the rest of the Earth and a driver for weather...