Popular Science

Smartphone-related thefts are becoming commonplace, especially in big cities. But you can contribute to the solution by taking a few precautions.

In November 2011, Marc Roth spent the last of his savings on new work clothes. Two months after moving to San Francisco in search of a sales-engineering job, he had finally secured employment, and a six-figure salary, at a Web development company. But when Roth reported for his first day of work, the company stalled. Two days later, they told him he no longer had a position. The lost opportunity was just part of a string of bad luck. Roth’s car—his home at the time—was robbed and its windows broken. He had to quit his temporary job, at a pizza restaurant, because nerve damage prohibited…

The race is on to find the next anti-malarial drug—or drugs. One experimental drug posted some good news recently.

On July 22nd, as an Airbus 320 airliner was flying into London's Heathrow airport, the plane's pilot spotted a drone nearby that was 700 feet off the ground. Revealed in a…

Humans and machines organize the world in very different ways. People are good at fitting small data sets into larger patterns: Eggs, chocolate, butter, sugar, and flour?…

On Saturday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft awoke from a very long slumber. The space probe – which has been traveling for nearly nine years and has traversed 3 billion…

A pre-release build of Windows 10 shows off some features of Microsoft's intelligent assistant, Cortana. But maybe it doesn't go far enough.

A Chinese defense company recently unveiled a long-range weapon that can cause people overwhelming pain without killing them. IHS Janes reports that the system, known as…

Cholesterol Dependent Cytolysins are toxins known for punching pores into unsuspecting cells. Now researchers have shown how that happens at the atomic level.

Psst! There's a team of engineers in Canada working on spray-on solar cells.

The privacy-focused Blackphone will get an app store this January, featuring software specifically curated for its privacy-consciousness.

In a recent debate on GMOs in New York City, the audience sided with the tech. But are views changing in the broader conversation?

Prosthetic limbs that can be controlled by an amputee’s thoughts or muscle movements already exist. But what if they could also sense the environment and then send that…

It took some hardware changes and special additions to get the X-15 up to its top speed of Mach 6.7.

In early 2016, the Imperial College of London will begin construction on a school for the future. The academy's attending students? Drones. After careful assembly by…

Disney is best known for their big-eyed princesses, but now its researchers have figured out a way to make eye animations more realistic. Last week at a conference,…

FIDO—a non-profit alliance backed by Microsoft, Google, and other heavyweights—wants to kill the password and replace it with biometrics.

Here's the latest evolution experiment I've found. The setup shows that evolution can occur in pretty minimal conditions.

Quick, what elements make up the sea? This new animation makes it easy to answer.

With a flick of a videogame-like controller, the sailor locks the laser onto the drone in mid-air. Within seconds, there’s a flash of light and sparks, and the drone nosedives straight into the ocean, the latest victim of the U.S. Navy’s new Laser Weapon System (or LaWS). The laser, mounted on the USS Ponce, has been stationed in the Persian Gulf for months, and today the Office of Naval Research released video of the first successful, live-fire tests there. Watch below: In the video, the laser locks onto what appears to be a rocket-sized object towed on a platform behind a boat. The…

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