Scientists recently added a whopping 301 newly validated exoplanets to the total exoplanet tally. The throng of planets is the latest to join the 4,569 already validated planets orbiting a multitude of distant stars. How did scientists discover such a huge number of planets, seemingly all at once? The answer lies with a new deep neural network called ExoMiner.

In May 2021, the Centers for Disease Control officially recognized that SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—is airborne, meaning it is highly transmissible through the air.

It's a tempting thought: With climate change so difficult to manage and nations unwilling to take decisive action, what if we could mitigate its effects by setting up a kind of chemical umbrella—a layer of sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere that could reflect the sun's radiation and cool the Earth?

Today, the two major political parties are often blamed for a plethora of problems in American governance. But for most of the last century and a half, political party competition has had positive effects on the welfare of Americans.

NASA's latest launch into outer space is going to make an impact. In fact, that's its entire mission. 

The intricate biological process known as autophagy plays a vital role in keeping our cells healthy and functioning by sweeping up and recycling bits of debris and invading microorganisms.

Rice University engineers have achieved a new benchmark in the design of atomically thin solar cells made of semiconducting perovskites, boosting their efficiency while retaining their ability to stand up to the environment.

A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist has discovered a method for detecting and better defining meteorite impact sites that have long lost their telltale craters. The discovery could further the study of not only Earth's geology but also that of other bodies in our solar system.

Children as young as age 6 develop ideas that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering—stereotypes that can extend into the late teens and contribute to a gender gap in STEM college courses and related careers.

If you brush against the wings of a butterfly, you will likely come away with a fine sprinkling of powder. This lepidopteran dust is made up of tiny microscopic scales, hundreds of thousands of which paper a butterfly's wings like shingles on a wafer-thin roof. The structure and arrangement of these scales give a butterfly its color and shimmer, and help shield the insect from the elements.

Just about everyone knows that exercise is good for you. Some people can even rattle off reasons it keeps your muscles and joints strong, and how it fights off certain diseases. But how many people can tell you the story of why and how physical activity was built into human biology?

Over the past several decades, researchers have moved from using electric currents to manipulating light waves in the near-infrared range for telecommunications applications such as high-speed 5G networks, biosensors on a chip, and driverless cars. This research area, known as integrated photonics, is fast evolving and investigators are now exploring the shorter—visible—wavelength range to...

Scientists from the University of Newcastle, Australian Museum, South Australian Museum, and Queensland National Parks and Wildlife have found and described two new, very loud frog species from eastern Australia: the Slender Bleating Tree Frog, Litoria balatus, and Screaming Tree Frog, Litoria quiritatus.

UN projections of how much current climate policies and national pledges to cut carbon pollution will slow global warming are more uncertain than widely assumed, researchers reported Monday.

Attempts to curb illegal fishing in African waters while turning a blind eye to large fishing fleets which are most damaging to fish stocks are putting small-scale fisheries at risk, according to new research from the University of St Andrews.

Residential energy use represents roughly one-fifth of annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. A team of researchers led by McGill University has used data from 60 million individual American households to look into how carbon emissions caused by household energy use vary by race and ethnicity across the country. Paradoxically, this first national level analysis found that even...

Cornell researchers have developed an innovative technique to track microbes and understand the various ways they process soil carbon, findings that add to our knowledge of how bacteria contribute to the global carbon cycle.

Our galaxy is not alone. Swirling around the Milky Way are several smaller, dwarf galaxies—the biggest of which are the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, visible in the night sky of the Southern Hemisphere.

By the late 21st century, northeastern U.S. cities will see worsening hurricane outcomes, with storms arriving more quickly but slowing down once they've made landfall. As storms linger longer over the East Coast, they will cause greater damage along the heavily populated corridor, according to a new study.

Manatees are starving in Florida, so state and wildlife agencies are considering an unprecedented measure: supplemental feedings.

The 10-year-old took off running down a dirt road in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, turning cartwheels, playing tag and picking fistfuls of wild bougainvillea.

A day after an oil sheen was spotted off Huntington Beach, authorities believed they had identified and contained the source: a leak from the damaged area of a pipeline that ruptured in October, spilling an estimated 25,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific.

A white dwarf star that completes a full rotation once every 25 seconds is the fastest spinning confirmed white dwarf, according to a team of astronomers from the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick.

A study examining eye disease in a common bird species shows how pathology and behavior interact in complex ways that determine how widely a pathogen can spread.