The Phoenix Mars Lander mission has uncovered the first direct evidence of water ice on the Red Planet.

Scientists find evidence that Mars was full of water early in the solar system's history.

A study shows that kids in a happy mood paid less attention to details.

The tortures of Antarctica include not only cold, but also heat. I discovered it nearly every morning. As I woke in my tiny tent, in the middle of a million square miles of ice, I struggled to get my clothes off quickly enough. The thermometer hanging in my tent often read over 30ºC. One time it even said 37ºC! It shows that part of what keeps Antarctica cold and frozen is its color. Because it is white, it reflects most of its sunlight, and heat, back into space. But our tents were bright red, and in the 24-hour summer sunlight they absorbed plenty of heat (and my ow...

Particles are the building blocks of matter, and matter makes up everything you can see. The Earth and moon are matter. So is your body, your computer’s screen, even the air you breathe. Which means they’re all made of particles. Lots and lots of particles, of all different kinds, stuck together.Atoms, which used to be considered the smallest unit of matter, are made from particles too. Just how small is an atom? That’s a tricky question, since different atoms have different sizes and atoms are mostly empty space. But here’s one way to think about it: Let’s say you wanted to f...

Rigorous standards exist for what teachers should know and be able to do. The rub: only about three U.S. teachers out of every five schools have demonstrated they meet those standards.

Chimpanzees not only share our ability to use tools. They also share our ability to create tools for a specific purpose. A group of Japanese scientists recently witnessed this inventiveness in action. The researchers watched a 5-year-old chimp named JJ use a long twig to capture ants in a new way. At first meeting with only limited success, the innovative chimp then refashioned his tool for better results. Tool use among chimpanzees is well documented. Chimps in some communities, for example, plunge long sticks into anthills and then eat the clumps of ants that cling to th...