Surprising Science

Historical icons look as though they’re still alive and working today in these incredible colorized old photographs, brought to the Internet’s attention by Open Culture.

The Times joined a growing chorus of federalists and anti-prohibitionists when its editorial board recently called for the federal government to defer to state law on the marijuana question.

Any human population sent from Earth to colonize another planet–whether it be Mars, a moon of Jupiter, or a rock beyond our solar system–should number from 20,000 to 40,000 people. 

A new study shows that when you pull an all-nighter or deprive yourself of sleep, you also put yourself at risk of developing false or inaccurate memories.

It takes bright ideas and business savvy to make waves in Silicon Valley. It’s also important to not be a jerk.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe believes the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be enhanced by a concurrent skills competition between the world’s top robots. Would a Robot Olympiad be a silly stunt or a major step for 21st-century technology?

“At a starting price of around $35,000, a third of the cost of a top-range Model S, Tesla wants the car to compete against the BMW 3-Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedans.”

Experts say it could be decades before autonomous cars are ready for cities. 

If there was an award for the single greatest hub of pseudoscience on the internet, the website Natural News would well and truly take the crown tin foil hat. Expect […]

In the next few decades, climate change is going to displace millions of people. Scott Leckie of Business Spectator has penned an article detailing his ideas on how world leaders need to prepare for this imminent crisis.

Motorola has introduced a temporary tattoo that can easily unlock your cell phone. Is digital body art something we can anticipate seeing more of in the future?

Burt Bacharach was right; the look of love is in your eyes. New research reveals how eye movements can betray a person’s lustful or loving feelings.

A lunch-time meditation club at a North Philadelphia elementary school encourages third- and fourth-graders to take part in mindfulness exercises.

Although ingredients in Gatorade and Powerbars may help intense athletes perform at their highest level, the rest of us ought to stay away.

NASA released this image today of the nighttime view of one of the 66 house-sized dishes at Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), high up in the Atacama Desert of Northern […]

A new gadget called the pd.id detects date rape drugs that may have been slipped inconspiculously into an unattended drink. The devices are battery powered and can be used repeatedly.

Turns out that being nice to other people isn’t just good for the recipients of your kindness. According to the latest research, people who are generous and altruistic reap a […]

“[M]aybe decades or millenniums from now — here or someplace yet to be imagined — science on Earth, circa 2014, will look like nothing more than a good start.”

It’s long been held that eight hours is the magic number when it comes to sleeping, but that number clashes with reality–when’s the last time you got a solid eight hours? 

What is this massive eruption on the Sun? Nothing unusual. It just threw a solar filament, and this one pictured took place in 2012, producing a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). […]

It turns out blowing into your old Nintendo cartridges probably did more harm than good. The reason? Human breath is gross.

A giant squid haunts the depths of Earth’s sky. NASA explains: A mysterious, squid-like apparition, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth’s sky. In the […]

The Seoul Metropolitan Government has offered employees the chance to take an hour off of work for an afternoon snooze, just as long as the workers make it up by arriving to work earlier or leaving later.

The world’s population is expected to hit 10 billion this century. Future widespread hunger is a palpable fear. New research shows that it need not be.

We’ve come a long way from the days when women were relegated to the home and when Supreme Court decisions turned on the “obvious” observation that “woman’s physical structure and the performance […]

Want to put your new 3D printer to the test? Try a copy of the Homunculus Nebula. NASA explains: The dusty, bipolar cosmic cloud is around 1 light-year across but […]

Around 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. The World Health Organization reports that depression is the leading cause of disability. It is a serious clinical problem, and leading treatments, […]

From TVs and laptops to tablets and smartphones, screen time trades off with other valuable actives, according to a study of over 1,300 3rd to 5th graders. 

Spanish researchers have discovered that crowds may be less wise than we once thought, at least according to the (often observed) phenomena that aggregated wisdom is more accurate than that of a single individual.

In this image, what happened to half of Saturn? Why is the moon getting in the way? NASA explains: As pictured above on the far right, Saturn is partly eclipsed […]