NASA officials have revealed their vision for what comes after the wildly successful Curiosity rover on Mars. Think of it as Curiosity Plus. Using Curiosity’s design as a starting point, Mars 2020 (as it’s currently known) will be another rover digging around the surface of the red planet...
The glut of new oil in North America has been accompanied by a boom in moving that petroleum by train. Railway traffic of crude oil in tankers has more than doubled in volume since 2011—and such transport led to tragedy in the early hours of July 6...
When the fresh wheat samples arrived at her lab this spring, Carol Mallory-Smith, a weed scientist, didn’t know what to expect. The concerned farmer who sent them had contacted her because a patch of wheat had refused to die after being treated with a powerful herbicide called Roundup...
Notice anything different today? Is the sun looking a little smaller? Or the Earth moving a little slowly?Well, today is Aphelion Day.Around 11 A.M. Eastern, Earth passes through the point in its orbit that is farthest from the sun, a point called the aphelion...
After witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore on the night of September 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key was moved to immortalize the scene in what became the U.S...
The effect is as astonishing as it is hypnotic: a chain of metal beads magically arcs above its container as the beads fall to the ground. The beads in the video, made by Steve Mould, who hosts several BBC science shows, are not magnetic, either...
Earlier this month, Scientific American editors and contributors published a list of this summer's best science books, collecting titles from the "Recommended" page in our magazine and the "Books" section of our website.Now we want to bring you closer to the authors of these books...
The late physicist Erwin Schrodinger was probably relieved to know that flesh and blood cats are too big to behave according to the laws of quantum physics.
Despite being the closest star to Earth, the sun still has its secrets. What drives the powerful eruptions of gas known as coronal mass ejections? How does the sun regulate Earth's climate?...
Lonesome George checks out a keeper in his Galápagos pen, May 3, 2011--a year before he died.Credit: Philip Yam The world’s most famous tortoise will soon make a return to public display—in mounted form.The last of his species, Lonesome George was an icon for conservation and evolution...