Science

For biologists, menopause is baffling. If natural selection favors genes that produce more descendants, why don’t women remain fertile their entire lives? What’s the evolutionary benefit of living for so many years...

In 2021, it seemed as if Mars had a surprisingly big heart. Scientists had been using InSight, a robotic lander to study the planet’s insides. The spacecraft had listened to enough marsquakes...

My paddle slips gently through calm ocean water as the kayak glides toward the mouth of Morro Bay Harbor. I approach a sandbar covered in resting cormorants, as sea otters float in...

At the bottom of the world, the floating edges of one of the enormous ice sheets covering Antarctica are facing an invisible threat, one that could add to rising sea levels around...

They call it Q-Day: the day when a quantum computer, one more powerful than any yet built, could shatter the world of privacy and security as we know it.It would happen through...

The problem is daunting: Powerful but expensive new drugs could help many of the 100 million American adults who have obesity and alleviate a grave public health concern.But how can the nation...

Martin Goetz, who joined the computer industry in its infancy in the mid-1950s as a programmer working on Univac mainframes and who later received the first U.S. patent for software, died on...

Over the past decade, the sunflower sea star has gone from a mighty predator of the Pacific Ocean floor to nearing extinction. The Nature Conservancy estimates that 5.75 billion sunflower sea stars...

Attacks on medical facilities jeopardize health care not only for those injured by fighting, but also for all those with routine medical needs. On Thursday, Doctors Without Borders (also known as M.S.F.,...

At first, it seemed to be another caprice of two already unusual animals: Flying squirrels and platypuses were found to be fluorescent, absorbing invisible ultraviolet light and re-emitting it in shocking pink...