Popular Science

Long before the invention of gunpowder, ancient armies used siege engines to hurl all sorts of terrible, yet creative, missiles. The Carthaginians put poisonous snakes in clay jars and then launched them at enemy ships. The Romans preferred to throw bags of bees at their foes. And the Mongols invoked an early but gruesome form of germ warfare by tossing plague-infested corpses over the walls of castles they were besieging. While reading about the bad old days, it struck me that a replica Roman legion–style catapult might be just the thing to bring excitement to my neighborhood block party.

Using ultrasound waves targeted at the brain, a team of Australian researchers has restored memory to mice with Alzheimer’s disease. More than 5 million Americans have …

For one shot in the upcoming movie Age of Adaline, starring Blake Lively and Harrison Ford, a camera drone hovered at 2 feet off the ground, then soared up to 125 feet.

Three men from the town of Newcastle in northeast England were diagnosed this week with rare disorders based on their genetic information. They had volunteered to…

Every now and then, the Sun sends us a few excited visitors, in the form of supercharged particles. Whenever solar flares or other eruptions surge from our star, they often…

There is a certain order to the universe of war: soldiers fight, ships sail, and bombs fall from the sky. A new project by Boeing and Saab upends the notion of what bombs…

Earth isn’t the only space rock in our solar system with an ocean. Astronomers theorize that a vast sea lies underneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and many…

Few materials in the universe are in as short supply as plutonium-238--the hot, radioactive material NASA uses to power its pluckiest spacecraft. It's estimated only 77…

Stealth aircraft are defined by their smooth edges and deliberate angles. While this provides a sleek aesthetic, it's not very conducive to re-fueling during flight. Mid-air…

The quantity and diversity of bacteria that populate the human gut is truly mind-boggling; there are over 10,000 species of microbes, and for every human gene in your body,…

Personal genetics company 23andMe will soon start developing pharmaceuticals, according to Bloomberg. After the Food and Drug Administration ordered the company to stop…

NASA announced today that researchers using the Hubble space telescope have detected the presence of a saltwater ocean on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. Scientists…

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa may be quieting down, but its deadly impacts are still rippling through the region. After the epidemic wreaked havoc on health care…

How do you reconstruct a civilization's history when it has been literally trampled underfoot? Some of Rome's roads through the Balkans are largely forgotten, others still…

The trippy pulsating flower above is actually color-changing science in motion. Scientists at UC Berkeley developed a new super-thin silicon material that changes color…

When colorized, Wi-Fi strength within a room looks surprisingly uneven.

Much like marathon runners, everything goes fine for a drone until it hits a wall. Only, unlike marathoners, in the case of drones the wall is usually a literal wall. A new…

This morning Robert Bigelow—budget hotel billionaire; paranormal investigator; space entrepreneur—unveiled the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which will soon…

Is it possible that we’re living in too much future? Days before South by Southwest (SXSW) opened, participants were told that they can’t bring drones to the conference.

We already know what happens when a bird hits a drone, and we know what can happen when birds hit airliners, but what about a drone colliding with a commercial jet?

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