Popular Science

A Kickstarter campaign for a "virtual reality mask" wants to add smells, heat, and even water misting to your VR experience.

Today, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) granted Shell approval to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean. Once the company…

Google's self-driving cars have only been involved in 11 accidents over 1.7 million miles driven. That's probably better than most people.

Humans, like other primates, aren’t born with the ability to discriminate between faces--it takes time for the brain to develop enough to do so. Though researchers have…

Birds have an amazing array of beaks, from the curved snout of a flamingo, to the delicate and deadly beak of an owl, to the rounder snout of the dino-chicken. If you…

A small but disturbing study published last summer found that vaping indoors--even in a well-ventilated room--releases ultrafine particles and potentially carcinogenic hydrocarbons into the air. “Our data confirm that e-cigarettes are not emission-free,” the authors wrote. Still, studies of exhaled vapor find that such emissions turn up at concentrations so low they may not pose much of a health risk to bystanders (or vapers). The Food and Drug Administration, which may be called upon to regulate e-cigarettes, remains cagey: “More data is needed to determine the constituents in e-cigarette…

Just over two weeks ago, a large earthquake struck Nepal, killing more than 8,000 people, and literally moving mountains. This morning, the earth moved again, the shaking…

During the last weeks of winter, in an airy kitchen at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, two design students are making cocktail bitters. A long wooden table holds…

When Shell starts drilling in the Arctic this summer, they will do so free of harassment from robots, thanks to an injunction by an Alaskan district court. Greenpeace,…

We tend to think of viruses as pathogens but they are not all out to harm us. Some are symbiotic. Now a researcher has stated the case for viruses as friends.

It looks like magic, from a distance: flying lights traveling in a circle around a single illuminated human. In ages past it would seem to be full of spirits, but to a…

Say hello to the hunk of plastic that could replace your anesthesiologist. Right now, only four U.S. hospitals are using the Sedasys anesthesiology machine to sedate…

There are wildlife refuges in all 50 states and territories protecting animals both on the land and in the water. But what about up in the sky? Plenty of birds, bats, and…

The Antonov 178 flies off for the first time, and China's Beijing A-Star Airspace and Technology Corporation wants to build them in China.

Simple white canes have helped the blind to navigate the world since World War II. Now, this old technology is getting a high-tech upgrade. Students at Birmingham City…

Sure, we’ve heard a lot about smart homes and how they’re the wave of the future. Yet that future has always seemed just over the horizon. But now several home-automation…

We as humans have a lot of characteristics that make us easy to distinguish from one another, such as the details in our fingerprints, eyes, and hair. Research over the…

War may be one horseman of the apocalypse, but for much of human history its destructive potential had nothing on its stablemate Pestilence. The Spanish Flu pandemic that…

Since it first came on the market in 1998, Viagra has been found to address more conditions than just erectile dysfunction—it treats hypertension, altitude sickness, and…

When the U.S. Army canceled the Airlander--a hybrid airship that borrows from both soft-bodied blimps and rigid-bodied zeppelin-style dirigibles--it looked like the dream…

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