Science | featured news

New results from a look into the split second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is a bit older than previously thought but the core concepts of the cosmos - how it began, what it's made of and where it's going - seem to be on the right track....

If scientists detected a major asteroid headed for Earth now, it would take at least five years and billions of dollars to develop an effective defense system to either alter its course or destroy it, scientists say.

Does a new study offer a bird's-eye view into evolution? Fewer cliff swallows are being killed by moving vehicles because of evolution, suggests a study published online today in the journal Current Biology. "These birds have been exposed to vehicles and roads for 30-plus years," says Charles Brown, the study's lead author. "During that time, they have evolved to avoid being killed by traffic. Evolution can happen very rapidly, and some animals can adapt to urban environments very rapidly."

A newfound particle discovered at the world's largest atom smasher last year is indeed a Higgs boson, which is thought to play a role in how other subatomic particles get their mass, scientists reported Thursday at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy.

Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced they are confident that the new subatomic particle discovered last summer is a version of the long-sought Higgs boson. The particle bears key attributes of the so-called "God particle" that was theorized nearly a half-century ago as fundamental to the creation of the universe.

Scientists in Tanzania turned an iPhone into an amateur microscope to check schoolchildren for intestinal worms.

NASA scientists say tests on a Mars rock show the planet could have supported primitive life. The analysis was done by the rover Curiosity, which drilled into the rock, crushed it and tested a tiny sample. The rover was the first spacecraft sent to Mars that could collect a sample from deep inside a rock.

The huge ocean sloshing beneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa likely makes its way to the surface in some places, suggesting astronomers may not need to drill down deep to investigate it, a new study reports.

Neanderthals were big game hunters who feasted on mammoth and rhino but didn’t or couldn’t eat smaller, leaner meat.

You're older than you think. DNA from an unnamed African-American from South Carolina is so distinctive that it led scientists to a unique conclusion: The roots of the human tree date back much further than previously thought.