It measures your cardio fitness, but it's not as important as tech companies want you to think.

Life may have emerged from a surprisingly simple network of chemical reactions long before cells or genes existed.

Early risers across North America and Europe may spot a bright, silent light gliding across the Christmas sky — and it just happens to coincide with an ISS flyby.

Ancient wolves found on a human-occupied Baltic island reveal unexpected and complex forms of prehistoric human-animal interaction. Researchers have uncovered wolf remains dating back thousands of years on a small and remote island in the Baltic Sea. Because …

For most, getting into a car is a task that can be done without assistance. Yet for those whose destination is the Moon, the process of getting inside and

A new theoretical framework argues that the long-standing split between computational functionalism and biological naturalism misses how real brains actually compute.

A coal seam fire has burned under Centralia, PA since 1962. Population dropped from 1,500 to 5. It could burn 250 more years.

: Spacecraft set to burn up in a few weeks, but it could have been worse

What happens as a raindrop impacts bare soil has been fairly well-studied, but what happens to raindrops afterward is poorly understood. We know that the initial splash of raindrops on soil contributes to erosion, but a new study, published in the Proceedings…

We pay tribute to our friend and colleague, whose journalistic talent and commitment to inclusivity left an indelible mark on Physics Magazine.  

A new dinosaur species, Mamenchisaurus sanjiangensis, with an incredibly long neck rewrites the history of Jurassic dinosaurs in East Asia.

After more than 50 years of theory and speculation, time reflections, a bizarre and elusive phenomenon, have been observed for the first time.

Scientists reveal why ice remains slippery at -40°F: it is not melting, but rather consists of invisible liquid layers of molecules.

Earth is taking in more energy than it releases back to space—a growing "energy imbalance" that is fueling global warming. A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science finds that recent c…

The Perseverance rover has been exploring the Jezero Crater for years, and it's finally found a potential meteorite, now named Phippsaksla by scientists.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has just taken its milestone 100,000th photo of the Red Planet using its high-definition camera. It reveals a dark region of moving sand dunes.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged the largest protoplanetary disk ever observed circling a young star. For the first time in visible light, Hubble has revealed the disk is unexpectedly chaotic and turbulent, with wisps of material st…

Scientists discovered "dark oxygen" produced by deep-sea polymetallic nodules deep below sea level, redefining our understanding of ocean and early Earth...

Highlights from a cometary trio that captured our imaginations.

Scientists at Ames National Laboratory, in collaboration with Indranil Das's group at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (India), have found a surprising electronic feature in transitional metal-based compounds that could pave the way for a new class of sp…

More than a billion years ago, in a shallow basin across what is now northern Ontario, a subtropical lake much like modern-day Death Valley evaporated under the sun's gentle heat, leaving behind crystals of halite—rock salt.

The shape of the universe is not something we often think about. My colleagues and I have published a new study that suggests it could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction.

An international team of researchers is studying how vibration applied to tendons influences how people experience physical effort during exercise. Why does a brief jog leave some people feeling worn out while others appear to run with ease? Training level an…

Unearthed from the past, 200-million-year-old dinosaur embryos hold more than just fossilized bones.

A colossal fossil hidden inside a seaside boulder is forcing scientists to rethink everything they knew about life before the dinosaurs. Measuring the length of a car, this ancient creature didn’t just break size records—it upended decades of scientific assum…