Imagine a time when Earth was a molten, volcanic wasteland, heavily bombarded by colossal asteroids. We’ve long feared these cosmic impacts as destroyers of life, but what if they were the key to our ...

On a remote hillside in modern-day Turkey sits Göbekli Tepe, the oldest temple on Earth. For centuries, archaeologists believed it was a religious center built by nomadic hunter-gatherers before the ...

To talk about pregnancy, we should first talk about frogs. Frogs spawn hundreds of eggs in water that is teeming with parasites and predators. In some species these eggs grow at breakneck speed, ...

What if the fundamental “stuff” of the universe isn’t matter or energy, but information? That’s the idea some theorists are pursuing as they search for ever-more elegant and concise descriptions of ...

Split a mile in half, you get half a mile. Split the half mile, you get a quarter, and on and on, until you’ve carved out a length far smaller than the diameter of an atom. Can this slicing continue ...

As a Harvard undergraduate, Sarah Demers—now a professor at Yale University—didn’t have the job you would imagine of a young student of particle physics. She wasn’t running code, writing equations on ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. To find out, we imagined a souped-up spacecraft that could ...

Dr. Percy Julian was a man of genius, devotion, and determination. The grandson of enslaved people from Alabama, Dr. Percy Julian met with every possible barrier in a deeply racist and segregated ...

Whether out of mischief or just plain boredom, most of us have fired a rubber band slingshot at some point. It’s a pretty thoughtless task: Hook a rubber band around your thumb, stretch it backwards ...

The planet looks blue from space, but new research shows that most of Earth's water may actually be deep underground. Share Earth is a jewel of the solar system, painted blue by the vast oceans that ...

Chris Mazurek was a freshman in college when he had a dream that he was inside the Legends of Zelda video game. He saw himself as the main protagonist, Link, in third person. Suddenly, beeping noises ...

They haven't got no noses, The fallen sons of Eve; Even the smell of roses Is not what they supposes; But more than mind discloses And more than men believe. —from "The Song of the Quoodle," G.K.