Surprising Science

Credit card and technology companies have talked about mobile wallets—mobile phones that work as credit cards—for well over a decade. But now the pieces are starting to fall into place.

An experiment carried out more than 50 years ago has revealed that volcanoes may have played a crucial role in the formation of the first organic building blocks of life on Earth.

According to a new study, the next generation of space lasers could test for the existence of dimensions beyond the three we experience, perhaps solving some of physics’ thorny problems.

First we created positrons, electrons’ antimatter counterparts. Now, the newly-discovered antihelium-4 could tell us whether there are vast pockets of antimatter in our universe.

Advances in biotechnology, rather than feeding the world, are making matters worse by fueling the production of inefficient products like animal feed and food-competing biofuels.

Earth’s magnetic field has typically been understood to shield the planet from solar wind, but recent observations of Mars and Venus have sparked a debate over the supposed shield.

Experts hesitate to predict where Fukushima’s radiation will go because its travel patterns are as mercurial as the weather and as complicated as the food chains along which they move.

Professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia University, Brian Greene specializes in superstring theory and explains how he has come to see our universe as one among many.

Propelling a spaceship with photons would be like trying to energize a spaceship with a flashlight.

The Newspaper Guild has called on bloggers to form an ‘electronic picket line’ around the Huffington Post and boycott further posts until the HP changes its business model.

To truly enable a Digital Society, People have to be the focus of the services offered. People that want access to their world anywhere, at any time from any device.

Legislation that papers over creepy online advertisements might make the problem less visible, but it won’t make our privacy foundations solid.

The doubling of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore’s Law, is just one manifestation of the greater trend that all technological change occurs at an exponential rate. 

Chernobyl and Three Mile Island did not stop nuclear power growth. Will the Japan nuclear crisis at Fukushima delay or end the ‘nuclear renaissance’? Governments are reassessing their plans.

A new mother’s body goes through many changes—among them, key parts of her brain get bigger. And the more these areas grow, the greater the mother-infant bond seems to be.

Similar to the way Google crawls the Internet, scientists have mapped a three-dimensional circuit of connected cells in the cerebral cortex, allowing them to navigate the mind’s jungle.

A computer-music system that interacts directly with the user’s brain, by picking up the tiny electrical impulses of neurons, may aid in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

The ancient Chinese practice of tai chi appears to relieve symptoms of depression in older people, a new study shows. Slow movement, breathing and meditation have clear health benefits.

A specialty known as adolescent medicine fills the gap for parents and young people who feel out of place in the pediatrician’s office, but unready for the primary care physicians who see adults.

Amidst the nuclear crisis in Japan, the F.D.A. is alerting consumers to be wary of internet sites and other retail outlets promoting products making false claims to prevent or treat effects of radiation.

Scientists may have found a molecular bounty hunter—a tiny snippet of R.N.A. called microRNA 31—that can kill wayward cancer cells hiding in parts of the body far from the initial tumor.

The companies that introduced products like Doritos, Miracle Whip, Butterfinger and the venti caramel Frappuccino now maintain that the future lies in the health and wellness category.

While women feel pain more intensely than men, they are better at coping with it emotionally, according to a study in London. Men, on the other hand, feel less pain, but are more afraid of it.

We are living longer despite getting fatter, and there is no sign yet that the increase in life expectancy is coming to an end, according to a study from the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Dr. John Ioannidis, a physician-researcher at the University of Ioannina, Greece, claims that up to 90 percent of published medical research that doctors rely on when treating patients is flawed.

Computers may become biological before humans go cyborg since adding computer chips to someone’s brain is a long way away, but adding neurons to a computer may be just around the corner.

Closer to Earth than any time since 1993, the moon will be 20 percent brighter than usual tonight. Will its fabled effects on the body, such as encouraging crime and fertility, be amplified, too?

The majority of people who met their current partner online did not find love through dating sites, but chat rooms (24%), social networking sites (14%), bulletin boards (8%) and a variety of different sites. 

Conventional chemotherapy is like trying to turn off the lights in your kitchen by nuking your house. Personalized medicine will try to turn off the lights by flipping a switch.

Researchers think goose-bumps probably reflect a distinct emotional state, a kind of awed mixture of fear and joy. English and French lack a word for this, but German has two.