Three studies examine Americans' sleep deprivation, pointing to cellphones and work as chief culprits, and the consequences of sleeplessness for kids

Scientists find an enormous empty swath in space. How does it change what we know about the origins of the universe?

A new report says gestational diabetes is strongly linked to childhood obesity -- but there's a lot you can do to treat the condition

Screwcapped wines are quickly gaining popularity, and it's got cork producers coming up with new ways to stay on top

Scientists peek into a newly forming solar system 1,000 light years away and discover five times the water on Earth -- plus some unexpected tidbits about our own solar system's past

Researchers are still figuring out the dangers and benefits of hormone replacement therapy, but two new studies give a boost to estrogen as a defense against dementia

It's not an artifact of marketing. A new study says girls may be hard-wired to prefer pink shades -- and boys, blue

A fabled fossil goes on view for the first time in decades -- and ignites a controversy

Crime-fighting "tinkerers" are figuring out how to get all the inside dope about you from your supposedly trusted gadget

The FDA has approved the vaccine only for girls and women up to age 26. Now a medical debate is raging over whether older women should get it too

Commander Steve Swanson and flight engineer Reid Wiseman, both from NASA, and German flight engineer Alexander Gerst are doing six-month tours in orbit. Via live video downlink on July 9, they filled us in on how they spend their days. What time did you guys punch in this morning, and what does your workday look like? Swanson: We started at about 7:30, and I have some repairs to do and other...

Popular Among Subscribers The Tragic Risks of American Football Subscribe U2’s Mission to Save MusicThe Rise of Concealed Weapons in AmericaI read that you’ve spent 7,000 hours underwater. True? That’s not counting the shower. Just actual scuba diving. It’s almost one year of your life. So when you go down now, what excites you? You...

Popular Among Subscribers Obama’s Trauma Team Subscribe The Mindful RevolutionAustralia’s ShameTime was, a picture of an infinitely tiny point could have been described with a simple caption: “The universe, actual size.” That’s clearly not the case anymore, and it’s close to unanimously accepted that what changed...

These are the winters of our discontent. In 2014 much of the eastern half of the U.S. was gripped by cold so extreme that 91% of the Great Lakes was frozen by the beginning of March, the second largest extent of ice in more than 40 years. Throughout the contiguous U.S., average temperatures for the winter were 1°F below the 20th century average. …...

With Six Weeks left, 2014 is on track to be the warmest year on record globally, continuing a long string of hotter-than-normal years attributed chiefly to climate change. But don’t tell that to people in Casper, Wyo., where the temperature dipped to -25°F on Nov. 12–shattering the city’s all-time record low for the month. …...

The Space Community has had things rough of late. The explosion of an unmanned Antares rocket and the fatal crash of Richard Branson’s SpaceShipTwo serve as painful reminders of what can go wrong when you take on the cosmos. But things can go quietly, elegantly right too. On Nov. 12, the European Space Agency plans to land a research vessel on a comet in a first-of-its-kind maneuver....

It’s huge, it’s cold, it’s soulless. It’s possessed of forces that would rip you to ribbons the second you dared to step off the tiny planetary beachhead it has permitted us. What’s more, it completely defies understanding, at least for anyone who’s not fluent in the language of singularities and space-time and wormholes and all the rest. But never mind, because...

The first step to capturing a Burmese python, Jeff Fobb tells me, is to grab it by the tail. “That’s away from the biting end,” he adds helpfully. Fobb is a dangerous-animal specialist with the Miami Dade County Fire Rescue department. I’m at his home in the Miami suburb of Homestead to learn how to track and capture Burmese pythons, which can grow to more than 15 ft. (4.5 m). They choke...

Popular Among Subscribers Never Offline Subscribe Almost Everybody’s Got TalentEnding the War on FatRemember the guy you didn’t like in high school but had to be nice to because he had a car and he gave you lifts? Welcome to U.S.-Russia relations in space. Since 2011, when the last space shuttle stood down, American astronauts have had to...

Popular Among Subscribers Obama’s Trauma Team Subscribe The Mindful RevolutionBitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing UsThe early 1960s were a time when there seemed to be no problem so big that American technology couldn’t conquer it, including the eternal threat of drought. The solution seemed simple: build industrial plants capable of...

Popular Among Subscribers No Soldier Left Behind Subscribe The Transgender Tipping PointThe Green Revolution Is HereAmericans who don’t believe in global warming should visit my Miami Beach neighborhood at high tide, when Biscayne Bay surges through our storm drains and swamps our streets. In May, the New York Times ran a photo of sunny-day...

We don't need to ditch the grid. We need to fix the power business

You don’t want Don Yeomans’ job, no matter how appealing it seems. He’s an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which is awfully cool. And he’s one of the lab’s top guys, which is even better. The problem with Yeomans’ job is the pressure. He is never really off duty, and his work is very straightforward: he guards the planet. Really. If morning...

Nothing comes free, not even for the President of the United States. So when Barack Obama appeared at Tom Steyer’s San Francisco home for a fundraiser last year, the President had to know there would be an ask. The 56-year-old Steyer is a hedge-fund billionaire and a major-league Democratic donor. He is also convinced that climate change is the biggest threat facing the world—an argument he...