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A visualization of Tiktaalik roseae, an extinct aquatic animal with fossils that shed light on the evolution of land animals from marine animals millions of years ago.

New ‘Paleo-Robots’ Could Shed Light on Animal Evolution, Revealing How Some Fish Evolved to ‘Walk’ on Land

A team of roboticists, paleontologists and biologists are building robots to simulate crucial evolutionary developments that can’t be tested with static fossils

Researchers are trying to "bring back" the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a species that has not been officially recorded since 1936.

A 110-Year-Old Pickled Thylacine Head Helped Build the Most Complete Ancient Genome to Date, Says ‘De-Extinction’ Company

Colossal Biosciences reports it extracted DNA and RNA from the Tasmanian tiger specimen, a key step forward in its effort to create a modern proxy of the extinct species. Other scientists are calling for data to back up the claim

Officials unveiled the portal installation in Philadelphia's LOVE Park on October 22.

New ‘Portal’ Opens in Philadelphia, Connecting Residents to Cities Around the World With Identical Installations

The looming sculpture features a small camera above an eight-foot-tall screen, which displays live video from Lithuania, Poland and Ireland

The lack of a sense of smell, called anosmia, can be congenital or acquired at some point in a person's lifetime.

New Research

People Born Without a Sense of Smell Have Different Breathing Patterns, Study Finds

Study participants with lifelong anosmia sniffed less than those with a normal sense of smell. Future research could shed light on whether this has negative implications for their health

The Upper Klamath River is also part of restoration work. The salmon's return inspires biologists to continue their efforts in the upper basin.

Salmon Make a Long-Awaited Return to the Klamath River for the First Time in 112 Years, After Largest Dam Removal in U.S.

Chinook salmon spark excitement among local Klamath Tribes, who have advocated for decades to restore the flow of the river in California and Oregon

Prime numbers are only divisible by themselves and one.

Amateur Mathematician Discovers the Largest Known Prime Number, With More Than 41 Million Digits

Called M136279841, the value belongs to a rare class of prime numbers called Mersenne primes and was found using a supercomputer system spread across 17 countries

The Endurance was discovered resting on the seafloor east of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2022.

See the Wreck of Ernest Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’ in Astonishing Detail With This New 3D Scan

Created from more than 25,000 high-resolution images, the digital model shows artifacts from the ill-fated expedition, including a boot, dishes and a flare gun

The Super Heavy booster returning to the launch tower.

SpaceX Launches Starship Mega-Rocket and Catches Its Booster in Midair on First Try

The success is a giant leap toward the company’s goal to take humans and cargo all the way to Mars on the world’s biggest and most powerful launch vehicle

A rendering of the upcoming RTX Living in the Space Age Hall at Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, featuring the New Shepard rocket booster.

Historic New Shepard Rocket Booster and Crew Capsule Will Go on Display at the Air and Space Museum

The two artifacts donated by Blue Origin achieved record-breaking feats and will extend the museum’s story of trailblazing space travel into the present

An illustration of a pluripotent stem cell, which can be coaxed to develop into various kinds of tissue

World-First Stem Cell Treatment Reverses Diabetes for a Patient in China, Study Suggests

Scientists converted the patient’s own cells into blood sugar-regulating cell clusters before injecting them back into her abdomen—and one year later, she still doesn’t need insulin injections

NASA’s Earth Information Center Hyperwall at the National Museum of Natural History opened to the public on October 8, 2024.

Immerse Yourself in the ‘Hyperwall,’ NASA’s New Visual Showcase of a Changing Earth

A new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History combines satellite observations and historical data to offer a “larger-than-life look” at our planet’s climate today

John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on artificial neural networks and machine learning.

Scientists Who Developed the Building Blocks of Artificial Intelligence Win Nobel Prize in Physics

John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton shared the award for their work on artificial neural networks and machine learning

Researchers mapped all 139,255 neurons in the brain of an adult fruit fly, which are linked by more than 50 million synapses.

Scientists Unveil the First-Ever Complete Map of an Adult Fruit Fly’s Brain, Captured in Stunning Detail

The brain diagram, called a connectome, could revolutionize researchers’ understanding of the human brain, which has many parallels with a fruit fly’s

A bridge in Old Fort, North Carolina, appears damaged on September 30, following Hurricane Helene. Old Fort is roughly 30 miles from the town of Spruce Pine, which supplies much of the world's high-purity quartz.

Hurricane Helene Shutters ‘Critical’ Quartz Mines That Power the World’s Electronics, Solar Panels and A.I.

The small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is one of the only sources of high-purity quartz on Earth, but it has been left battered by the storm’s heavy rains

A rendering of the 3D-printed rounded hotel rooms

Workers Just Started Building the World’s First 3D-Printed Hotel in the Texas Desert

In the dusty landscape surrounding the city of Marfa, a huge 3D printer is constructing 43 new rooms and 18 residential homes as part of an expansion of El Cosmico

Ning Zeng and other researchers discovered this 3,775-year-old preserved log while conducting a wood vaulting pilot project in Quebec, Canada.

This 3,775-Year-Old Log May Hold the Secret to a Low-Cost Climate Solution

Researchers say burying wood could be a viable method to prevent carbon from reaching the atmosphere

A cross section of a chambered nautilus shell shows the newly defined shape, the "soft cell," repeating outward in a spiral.

Mathematicians Discover a New Class of Shape: the ‘Soft Cell’

If the structures look familiar, it’s probably because nature has been using them for a long time in places like nautilus shells, zebra stripes and onions

Gears turn inside an antique watch.

World’s First Ultra-Precise Nuclear Clock Is Within Reach After Major Breakthrough, Researchers Say

The technology, enabled by thorium atoms, could keep time more accurately than atomic clocks and enable new discoveries about gravity, gravitational waves and dark matter

This "everlasting" crystal contains the entire human genome, recorded using ultra-fast lasers, and is meant to instruct future species on how to create humans.

In Case Humans Go Extinct, This Memory Crystal Will Store Our Genome for Billions of Years

Scientists have created “a form of information immortality” meant to instruct future species on how to recreate humans. But who, or what, will find it?

A view from the webcast of the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony.

Anus-Breathing Animals and Pigeon-Guided Missiles: Ig Nobel Prizes Reward Unusual but Valuable Science

The annual award ceremony featured costumes, songs and paper airplanes as scientists recognized comedic research across ten disciplines

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