Urban wildfires like LA’s make harmful chemicals from burning plastics and electronics that can make indoor air dangerous for months.

Two gargantuan canyons on the moon were carved by a hailstorm of rocks — and that’s good news for future lunar astronauts.

Quantum physics underlies technologies from the laser to the smartphone. The International Year of Quantum marks a century of scientific developments.

Our brains are increasingly plastic. Minuscule shards and flakes of polymers are surprisingly abundant in brain tissue, a study of postmortem brains shows.

Riley Black’s new book, When the Earth was Green, uses the latest research to envision the ancient worlds of our favorite prehistoric animals.

While genetic tests can reveal the ancestry of enslaved individuals, strontium analysis can now home in on where they actually grew up.

Unlike Roman, Maya or Iñupiaq numerals, this isn’t a total reimagining of numbers. Instead, it’s an uncanny parallel universe. Any number without zeros retains its old appearance (1,776 is still 1,776 ...

This new six-part podcast follows the lives of people with severe depression who volunteered for deep brain stimulation.

Science dioramas of yesteryear can highlight the biases of the time. Exhibit experts are reimagining, annotating — and sometimes mothballing — the scenes.

In a lab test, chimps and orangutans can recognize their own reflection. But in the wild, baboons seemingly can’t do the same.

A compact method of detecting neutrinos provides new tests of physics theories and could lead to new reactor-monitoring methods.

Men have two birth control options: condoms and vasectomies. Why has it taken so long to develop more contraceptives?