Popular Science

Bloodletting, mercury cures, holes drilled in the head—many ancient medical remedies seem ill-advised based on our modern understanding of medicine. But researchers…

Drone supporters like to play up the advantages of drones for agriculture. Normally, this means gains from better maps and cheaper crop inspection, all technical tasks made…

Graphene, the super material that can make everything from square ice to night vision contact lenses, finally has a practical application: light bulbs!

You know all those stories where humans accidentally create a monster that eventually runs amok and destroys everything? That cautionary tale is playing out in real-time in…

Doctors often listen to music in the operating room to keep the surgical team calm and upbeat. There’s some evidence that the music calms patients as well--even the ones…

Though some may consider them a nuisance, opossums are amazingly hardy and opportunistic eaters, feeding on everything from the contents of a garbage can to fruits or…

Weather is free, of course, but predicting it, and anticipating changes like sudden storms or flash floods--that takes technical equipment and sensors. Thanks to 3D…

Update: The test was rescheduled until later this afternoon, and will take place from 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Perhaps the most iconic symbol to emerge from…

It isn't often that environmental scientists get good news. But a new study in Nature Climate Change found that for the past few years, the earth has been getting a little…

The last thing an admiral wants to do is send his own sailors face-to-face with explosives. A new project, jointly funded by the defense ministries of the United Kingdom…

When President Jimmy Carter set out to eradicate guinea worm disease 30 years ago, it afflicted 3.5 million people in rural Asia and Africa. In 2014, that number had…

For an organization at the heart of the future of war, DARPA can sometimes really undersell what it’s making. Late last night, the agency released a video about drone and…

Amazon's working with appliance makers to help ensure that you never run out of household supplies, whether it be water filters or laundry detergent.

Tampons are pretty much only made for their one purpose, but engineers at the University of Sheffield figured out a way for this feminine hygiene product to clean up the…

Last fall, Lockheed Martin divulged a new fusion reactor design--one it claimed could power homes and cars in a decade. The wildly optimistic claim is reminiscent of that old trope: Fusion is just 10 years away ... and always will be. Still, experiments suggest we’re getting closer. Fusion is simple, in theory. You extract hydrogen isotopes from water and lithium and heat the fuel to millions of degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit is irrelevant), creating the elusive fourth state of matter: plasma. The nuclei then move faster and faster until they collide and fuse, forming helium and releasing…

When a rodent feels pain, its face gets all scrunched up. Its ears flatten, its eyes narrow, and its nose and cheeks swell. Is this just a reflexive response that helps the…

You thought you knew the Internet. But sites such as Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram are just the surface. There’s a whole other world out there: the Deep Web. It’s a…

Ever wanted to visit an asteroid? Vesta Trek is NASA's 2D/3D map of the second largest asteroid in our solar system.

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