What are scientists looking for when searching for alien life? A lot, it turns out: the search for extraterrestrials requires the help from astronomers, planetary scientists, chemists, computer scientists, and geneticists, just to name a few. But are we barking up the wrong carbon-based tree?

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 …

Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate and Templeton Prize winner, has played a leading role in developing the most refined quantum mechanical understanding of the microworld and in proposing solutions to a …

What happens when a black hole a billion times more massive than our sun powers a star-like object? It’s a quasar of a question. These massive and extremely remote celestial …

James Peebles, one of the world’s greatest cosmologists, has profoundly influenced our understanding of dark matter, dark energy, and the big bang, contributions that earned him the 2019 Nobel Prize …

Does your dog really think and feel like a human? Do our closest primate relatives have brains and emotions similar to ours? What about the storied intelligence of dolphins and singing humpback whales? And do other species hold surprises for us if we’re willing to look closely?