Popular Science

Were it not for a volunteer and his drone, four people may have been swept away for good in floodwaters of Johnson County, Texas this past weekend. Drone operator Garrett…

It may look like a Fruit Roll-Up from a kid's lunch box, but this stretchy rubber sheet could help power the Internet of Things one day. Japanese electronics company Ricoh…

On windy but otherwise clear days between May and August, Australia’s skies occasionally get darkened by a cloud of spiders. That’s what’s happening right now in southern…

Prosthetics-maker Ossur has been testing brain-controlled prosthetic limbs for over a year. Now, this promising technology is ready for the real world.

Don't have enough cash for an Apple Watch? Try a Potato Clock instead. I'm far from a gardener, but I do like to grow things occasionally. Ever rummage through the…

In 1976, renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan brought a weird, reflective prop with him to the Tonight Show Staring Johnny Carson. The toy was a mockup of a solar sail—a…

Synthetic versions of opiates like morphine and heroin have been prohibitively expensive to make, so the drugs are still made the old-fashioned way, from opium poppies. Now…

In these United States summer is unofficially the sunny, sweltering weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And this year, that means we get an extra week.

From the body type alone, Sprite looks less like a drone and more like a sleek and modern water bottle aimed at hikers. It's a far cry from the standard four-rotored body…

Today, President Obama addressed the graduating class of the Coast Guard academy in a speech that mentioned the phrase 'climate change' 26 times. It might seem strange…

On Saturday, the United States arrested Hao Zhang, a professor at China’s Tianjin University, as he landed in Los Angeles. The charges brought against him, detailed in an…

You might be under the impression that young blood is the fountain of youth. A number of studies conducted in older mice (and, once, humans) over the past 10 years have…

We tend to think of oil and gas as a resource that was only utilized by humans once we entered the industrial age and our appetite for oil exploded. But unlike in…

The microbiome is important for health all through life, and scientists are increasingly turning their attention to good bugs for babies.

Three years ago, Eben Upton needed a cool gadget to lure students to his computer science program at the University of Cambridge. So he invented the Rasberry Pi. It has since become the cheapest hackable computer on the planet.

On May 19, a pipeline started leaking near the coast of Santa Barbara, spilling thousands of gallons of crude oil into the water. The cause of the leak remains uncertain,…

Pancakes are a delicious breakfast treat—but they look kinda boring. That's where PancakeBot comes in. It can squirt batter in a pre-programmed design to create intricate…

In what has been called an “act of evil,” four people were murdered on May 14 in a mansion in Washington, D.C. At first glance, the crime appeared to be motivated by money…

The whole point of virtual reality is to offer up the feeling of being transported into another world. But currently, avatar facial expressions fail to live up to VR's…

When my book Infested came out last month, I got an email from a reader in Toronto—an entomologist named Sam Bryks. He generally liked the book, he said, but he wished I had…

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