Walter Alvarez’s “A Most Improbable Journey” gives readers a tour of “Big History,” linking human history to unpredictable cosmic, geologic and biological events.
The tiny face of a 4-day-old zebrafish embryo snags the top spot in microscopy photography contest.
When it comes to attracting pollinators, one flower species catches more flies with honeybees.
Physical intelligence makes robots able to sense of the world around them.
New units based on fundamental properties of the universe will make measurements more precise.
Vikings in Iceland got a murderous boost from having large extended families.
Small earthquakes detected along the Newport-Inglewood Fault originate from deeper underground than once thought possible.
In a first, apes show that they understand when others hold false beliefs.
New ultraflexible material could be the future of bone repair, but awaits human testing.
Oldest avian voice box fossil yet discovered belonged to a ducklike bird that lived during the age of the dinosaurs.
Unicellular ancestors of animals had molecular tools used by multicellular life.
A new census of the cosmos suggests that there might be 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, about 10 times as many as previous estimates.
Strep B uses a toxic pigment made of fat to kill immune system cells, spurring preterm labor and dangerous infections, a monkey study shows.
Sensitive leg hairs may let jumping spiders hear sounds through the air at much greater distances than researchers imagined.
Stem cells grown in ovary-mimicking conditions in a lab dish can make healthy mouse offspring, but technique still needs work.
Cracks developing on comet 67P are signs of stress building in the neck of the comet that could lead to its two ends snapping apart.
Lava flows might explain a hot spot seen in data from Venus Express spacecraft.
Reflective patches on Pluto could be hints of rare cloud formation on the dwarf planet.
Discoveries about how Zika virus slows brain cell development could lead to treatments.
Saturn’s rings could be almost as old as the solar system, and the Cassini craft is poised to help find out.
Jupiter’s colorful bands originate several hundred kilometers beneath the cloud tops, the Juno spacecraft reveals.
Melanesians may carry genetic evidence of a previously unknown extinct human relative.
As the most popular candidates for dark matter fail to show up in detectors, scientists are broadening the search.
A chain of ions creates a crystal that repeats in time instead of in space.
A new artificial neural network hooked up to extra memory can learn to solve complex problems.
Saturn’s moon Dione might have an underground ocean, like several other moons in the solar system.
Pressure plates reveal how African elephants load their feet when they walk, providing clues to pachyderm podiatry problems.
Naked mole-rats have a protein that interrupts pain signal.
Vaccines have come a long way in 50 years.
Researchers took a 3-D printed kidney containing tiny stones and urine for a spin on a roller coaster and found their patients’ stories of kidney stones passing on the ride to have merit.
The newly-discovered Salton Trough Fault runs parallel to the southern San Andreas Fault in California, potentially affecting the region’s earthquake risk.
