For decades, biologists have read and edited DNA, the code of life. Revolutionary developments are giving scientists the power to write it. Instead of tinkering with existing life forms, synthetic biologists may be on the verge of writing the DNA of a living organism from scratch.

Not long ago, the idea of a computer beating a human at chess was the stuff of science fiction. But some of the most creative programmers of the 1980s and 90s were determined to make it a reality. And they did.

Geckos performing death-defying wall-climbing feats inspired materials scientist and engineer Michael Bartlett to invent adhesive that’s sticky powers are just as strong as this reptile. His Cool Jobs is developing …

The mechanism of collapsing stars falls short of explaining the existence of supermassive black holes—giants that weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun. Astrophysicist Priya …

Archaeologists Hannah Morris and Becca Peixotto tell the story of their efforts to uncover remains of a new species of human relatives that are over 200,000 years old in South …

Is the human brain an elaborate organic computer? Since the time of the earliest electronic computers, some have imagined that with sufficiently robust memory, processing speed, and programming, a functioning human brain can be replicated in silicon.