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Science

LIGO's founding fathers, from left: Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish. Not pictured: Ronald Drever

American Ingenuity Awards

Meet the Team of Scientists Who Discovered Gravitational Waves

This year, the geniuses behind LIGO announced that they had finally found what Albert Einstein had predicted a century ago

Anthony Antala

American Ingenuity Awards

Need a New Organ? Surgeon Anthony Atala Sees a Future Where You Can Simply Print It Out

When you can order a new body part online, you’ll have this doctor to thank

Sarah Parcak

American Ingenuity Awards

Space Archaeologist Sarah Parcak Uses Satellites to Uncover Ancient Egyptian Ruins

The Indiana Jones of low Earth orbit harnesses 21st-century technology to uncover long-buried treasures

Jeff Bezos

American Ingenuity Awards

Is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin the Future of Space Exploration?

No one had ever launched, landed and relaunched a rocket into space until the company’s historic achievement

Sputnik Planitia is a 325,000-square-mile, ice-covered basin on Pluto.

How the Pull of an Icy “Heart” Sent Pluto’s Poles Wandering

Using New Horizons data, scientists determine that the erstwhile planet has a more dynamic past than we thought

As a professional falconer, Rosen has trained all of her birds, which now number close to a dozen. Her brood includes Ziggy, a hybrid prairie-gyrfalcon.

Why Winemakers are Turning to Falconry to Tackle Pests

Napa Valley vintners are finding this tried-and-true deterrent more effective than modern technology

Sylvester James Gates, a theoretical physicist and voice for faith and science.

Think Big

Why Theoretical Physicist Sylvester James Gates Sees No Conflict Between Science and Religion

“I got used to the idea that questions had answers.”

The Field Museum's famed T-Rex Sue may be long dead, but she still requires a lot of TLC.

Preserve and Protect: How Paleontologists Care for Their Long-Dead, High-Maintenance Stars

Fossil collections are where the science of paleontology truly lives. Valuable dino bones must be treated accordingly

Mustard gas from wars past is decaying in the world's oceans—but scientists don't yet know how dangerous it could be. Here, U.S. Navy ship prepare for scheduled deployment in the Pacific Ocean in 2014.

Chemical Weapons Dumped in the Ocean After World War II Could Threaten Waters Worldwide

How worried should we be? Chemists are racing the clock to find out

Payam Pourtaheri and Ameer Shakeel enjoy casual conversation with Radia Perlman, 2016 National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee during the Meet the Experts session at 2016’s Collegiate Inventors Competition.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Could These College Inventors Tackle the Global Pesticide Problem?

Developed by a team of University of Virgnia students, AgroSpheres break down pesticide residues on crops hours after they are applied

A tickled rat.

New Research

What Tickling Giggly Rats Can Tell Us About the Brain

Their laughter manifests in a surprising region of the cerebral cortex

Grégoire Courtine, an author on the new study, holds a silicon model of a primate’s brain, a microelectrode array and a pulse generator. The brain-spine interface consists of elements like these.

New Research

A New Wireless Brain Implant Helps Paralyzed Monkeys Walk. Humans Could Be Next.

One small step for monkeys, one potential leap for humans

The well-known dinosaur skeleton known as "Big Mama" has been hiding a secret.

New Research

Fossilized Dinos Are Bones Turned to Stone—But Sometimes, Part of the Original Dino Survives

Every fossilized skeleton is a unique snowflake. We now know that some contain biological bits of tooth and claw

Workers from the Kenya Wildlife Service carry elephant tusks from shipping containers full of ivory transported from around the country for a mass anti-poaching demonstration.

New Research

Most Ivory for Sale Comes From Recently Killed Elephants—Suggesting Poaching Is Taking Its Toll

Carbon dating finds that almost all trafficked ivory comes from animals killed less than three years before their tusks hit the market

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