What attributes set our species apart? Taming fire? Expressing artistically? Solving problems creatively? Recent discoveries that have already upended humankind’s origin story by expanding our family tree, are challenging long-held …

Making sure the parachute deploys exactly on time and lands rovers safely on Mars is in the hands of NASA engineer Michael Meacham. Check out the experiments he conducts on …

Black holes may hold the key to understanding the most fundamental truths of the universe, but how do you see something that’s, well, black? Astronomers think they have the answer. …

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.

Powerful new genetic tools allow scientists to alter the DNA of any organism—with tests on human embryos already underway. Even more ambitious, synthetic biologists on the verge of creating the genetic material for a living organism from scratch are setting their long-term sites on fashioning a fully synthetic human genome.

We once shared the planet with Neanderthals and other human species. Some of our relatives may have had tools, language and culture. Why did we thrive while they perished?