Climate Change's Uncertainty Principle

A New Kind of Science Author Pays Brainy Undergrad $25,000 for Identifying Simplest Computer

News Bytes of the Week—Ovulating Strippers Make Bigger Tips

Hard disk pioneers win physics Nobel

Sputnik Hype Launched One-Sided Space Race

Earth-Like Planet Spotted in the Making

News Bytes of the Week—Attack of the space microbes

Quantum Chip Sends Information by Bus

Mars Images Reveal Few Signs of Recent Liquid Water

News Bytes of the Week—Bras fail bounce test

Sputnik and the Start of the Space Age

The new book Red Moon Rising chronicles the early days of the Russian-American space race

How Do Artists Portray Exoplanets They've Never Seen?

How realistic are images of planets around other stars—and should they be? CLICK HERE FOR AN IMAGE GALLERY

5 Goals for Exploring the Solar System [Interactive]

Forget Mars -- there are plenty of more important goals we should be pursuing in space.

Constellation/Orion: Back to the Moon [Slideshow]

America prepares for the next lunar missions

Newly Declassified Window Film Keeps Out Hackers, Phone Calls, EMPs

Like a tinfoil hat for your house, new technology promises to block hackers' access to your wireless transmissions—and protect against EMP attacks and explosions, to boot

Relative to the solar system, where is the Oort cloud? And what is its size and shape?

Could the International Space Station (ISS) serve as a base, way station or repair hangar for satellites and craft from complex missions beyond its orbit?

Do corked bats allow baseball players to hit farther?

How is everyday onboard exercise on the International Space Station changing the rate of bone loss of its occupants? Can individual differences between humans explain differences in bone loss in microgravity?

What is a "fictitious force"?

Strange but True: Black Holes Sing

Although sound cannot be heard in space, it can sometimes be seen

Fact or Fiction?: An Opera Singer's Piercing Voice Can Shatter Glass

Can the high C of a trained soprano quiver glass into dissolution?

Strange but True: Infinity Comes in Different Sizes

If you were counting on infinity being absolute, your number's up

Fact or Fiction?: Smog Creates Beautiful Sunsets

It depends on what color you like.

Fact or Fiction?: South of the Equator Toilets Flush and Tornadoes Spin in the Opposite Direction

How small a system can the Coriolis force control?

  A Need for New Warheads?

The U.S. government's proposal to build the first new nuclear warhead in two decades raises a host of questions

Nuclear Weapons in a New World

Countries are altering their nuclear arsenals, prompting the U.S. to refurbish its own warheads

  Playing Defense Against Lou Gehrig's Disease

Researchers have proposed potential therapies for a paralyzing disorder once thought to be untreatable

The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride

Could cosmic inflation be a sign that our universe is embedded in a far vaster realm

The Nuclear Threat

A look at strike capabilities worldwide, and how a bomb would affect single cities and people.

  Dark Riddles

Behavior of galaxy cluster may shift thinking about gravity

  Higher Power

Earth's heat keeps continents afloat and land above sea level

  New Beginnings

Ideas for a time before the big bang—which might be testable

  Dangling a COROT

Space telescope aims to find more planets orbiting other stars

  Dimensional Shortcuts

Is there evidence for string theory in a neutrino experiment?

The Inelegant Universe

Two new books argue that it is time for string theory to give way

Limited Visibility

Why did it take NASA so long to launch a woman into space?

Better Red Than Dead

A veteran researcher marshals evidence that Mars is geologically alive

Was Light Faster in the Past?

A maverick physicist posits the possibility--and much more

Amateurs Take On the Universe

A look back down the telescope at citizen astronomers

The Gedanken Experimenter

In putting teleportation, entanglement and other quantum oddities to the test, physicist Anton Zeilinger hopes to find out just how unreal quantum reality can get

The Geometer of Particle Physics

Alain Connes's noncommutative geometry offers an alternative to string theory. In fact, being directly testable, it may be better than string theory

The Beauty of Branes

Lisa Randall's thinking on higher dimensions, warped space and membranes catalyzed ideas in cosmology and physics. It might even unify all four forces of nature

Superhot among the Ultracool

With atoms near absolute zero, Deborah S. Jin created a Fermi condensate--opening a new realm in physics that might lead to room-temperature superconductivity

Doom and Gloom by 2100

Unleashed viruses, environmental disaster, gray goo--astronomer Sir Martin Rees calculates that civilization has only a 50-50 chance of making it to the 22nd century