Sequencing DNA from individual cells is changing the way that researchers think of humans as a whole.
Unsociable galaxies are unusual. Astronomers think that galaxies grow from scraggly clusters of stars to elegant spirals like the Milky Way by merging and pooling their resources. Loner galaxies like NGC 4178, which has spent most of the lifetime of the universe avoiding the company of other galaxies, are useful tools for disentangling how this…
Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, may be getting ready to support legislation to grant green cards to holders of advanced degrees in the so-called STEM fields. The Texas republican, the gatekeeper on immigration bills in the House, is being urged to take action by a broad coalition of groups, including…
The ability of U.S. scientists to monitor changes in the planet’s climate, natural hazards, and land surface continues to deteriorate, warns a report from the U.S. National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC). Aging satellites are being replaced too slowly, the report concludes, and by 2020 the country may have only 25% of its current observing…
A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star. The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither…
Every time I look at my face in a magnified mirror in a hotel bathroom, I jump back in surprise. Seen closely, my skin looks like the surface of a strange planet. Ridges and canyons pock my chin and lips. Forests of tiny hairs grow from my ear lobes. Unnoticed pimples rise from my nose…
A man fell to Earth from more than 24 miles high, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier under his own power — with some help from gravity. The man, Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian daredevil, made the highest and fastest jump in history after ascending by a helium balloon to an altitude of…