Most Emailed Science News

Space explorers have yet to get their hands on the replicator of "Star Trek" to create anything they might require. But NASA has developed a technology that could enable lunar colonists to carry out on-site manufacturing on the moon, or allow future astronauts to create critical spare parts during the long trip to Mars.

The small earthquakes that sporadically rattle the central United States may actually be aftershocks from a few extremely large quakes that occurred in the region almost 200 years ago, according to a new study

From their very first days, the cries of newborns already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, scientists now find.

Antarctica's icy lakes are home to a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously unidentified.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - A robot powered by a ground-based laser beam climbed a long cable dangling from a helicopter on Wednesday to qualify for prize money in a $2 million competition to test the potential reality of the science fiction concept of space elevators.

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.

ANNECY, France (AFP) - Western Europe's tallest peak, the snow-capped Alpine giant Mont Blanc, has shrunk by 45 centimetres (18 inches) in two years, experts said Thursday following an official survey.

Circle Nov. 17 on your calendar, for early that morning a moderate to possibly very strong showing of annual Leonid meteor shower is likely.

Pull me up, Scotty. At least one team has qualified for part of a $2 million prize up for grabs in this year's Space Elevator Games, a NASA-sponsored contest to build machines that can climb a cable in the sky – precursors for a futuristic transit system to space.

Some forward-looking vacationers have already booked a stay at the first space hotel, which is on track to open in 2012, according to the owners of the planned orbital resort.

Before there were flowers, pollination of plants by insects was likely rare, and scientists had no idea of the insect culprits. But a new discovery suggests at least one flittering pollinator.

The world's largest cruise ship is making its first transatlantic crossing from Finland to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where it will make its U.S. debut. Though colossal, the ship relies on the same physical principles as its smaller brethren to stay afloat.

One of the greatest mysteries of astronomy is the problem of the missing mass: All of the matter scientists can see in the universe accounts for only a small percent of the observed gravity.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Lower-than-feared sea temperatures this summer gave a break to fragile coral reefs across the Caribbean and the central Gulf of Mexico that were damaged in recent years, scientists said Thursday.

A new survey has found 22 of the earliest galaxies to form in the universe, confirming the age of one at just 787 million years after the theoretical Big Bang.

Silicon Valley's name may as well be Steam Locomotive Alley if some scientists have their way - they have come up with a way to replace the silicon used in semiconductor chips with another element called gallium, producing much faster circuits.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Allowing the heart to keep beating during coronary bypass surgery is riskier than stopping the heart and using a heart-lung machine to keep the patient alive, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The long-defunct Phoenix Lander is covered in frost on the frozen Martian wasteland, as seen in new images taken from orbit.

Striking new photos of water-vapor geysers erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus were beamed to Earth this week by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the ringed planet.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An international fisheries group set up to protect Atlantic tuna has done the opposite and driven one species of the fish, the bluefin, to the edge of extinction, environmentalists said Thursday.

Spanning just 10 feet in length and sporting a tiny horn on its nose, a newly identified dinosaur has become the oldest known relative of the fierce meat-eater, Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery suggests such tyrannosaurs were quite petite before they evolved into giant killing machines just before their demise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Want to know your entire DNA sequence? A California company has done it for as little as $1,700.

The Hubble Space Telescope's powerful new camera has taken the most detailed image yet of star birth in the nearby spiral galaxy M83.

An incriminating photograph of accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is not a fake, as Oswald and others had claimed, a new analysis concludes.

A gigantic, previously unknown set of galaxies has been found in the distant universe, shedding light on the underlying skeleton of the cosmos.

The supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, one of the youngest in our galaxy and one that has long puzzled astronomers, is likely a dense type of star called a neutron star swathed in a carbon atmosphere, a new study finds.

When scientists search the heavens for habitable worlds beyond Earth, they don't necessarily know what to look for. A new study has found that the most probable place to find intelligent life in the galaxy is around stars with roughly the mass of the sun, and surface temperatures between 5,300 and 6,000 Kelvin (9,100 and 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit) - in fact, stars very similar to our own sun.  

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canada will launch an investigation into why far fewer sockeye salmon than scientists had predicted returned to the Fraser River on the Pacific Coast this summer.

A new type of supernova – the explosive death of a star – has been discovered in which helium detonates on the surface of a white dwarf star.