They knew it had to exist, but they just couldn't find evidence of it. Now, after decades of searching, astrophysicists have found verification of the first molecule that formed minutes after the Big Bang. The helium hydride ion (HeH+) the scientists detected wasn't the original one created just after the Big Bang, but it has the same molecular structure — helium combined with hydrogen — they theorized formed at the time.

Under Republican and Democratic presidents from Nixon through Obama, killing migratory birds, even inadvertently, was a crime, with fines for violations ranging from $250 to $100 million. The power to prosecute created a deterrent that protected birds and enabled government to hold companies to account for environmental disasters.

Lucía was raped at 11. Her family’s demands for a legal abortion became the center of a global firestorm — and she still doesn’t know the whole story. Lucía sat up in her hospital bed as the priest made the sign of the cross on her forehead, the 11-year-old’s bulging belly visible underneath her pajama shirt. “Think long and hard about what you’re considering doing,” Lucía’s mother remembered the priest telling them. “Save both lives,” he said.

In the early days of the internet, way back in the 1990s, tech utopians envisioned a glittering digital future in which people from very different backgrounds could come together online and, if not reach consensus, at least learn something from one another. In the actual future we inhabit, things didn’t work out this way. The internet, especially social media, looks less like a dinner party and more like a riot. People talk past one another, and the discussion spirals down accordingly.

The American right is not done trying to entrench health care’s status as an exclusively free market good: in a short letter to a federal appeals court Monday, Trump’s Justice Department asserted its approval of a district court ruling in December that scrapped the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) on grounds widely seen as legally dubious.

Rummaging through your refrigerator, you come across a jar of mayonnaise labeled “BEST IF USED BY 06/10/19.” If it’s mid-July, are you risking illness by slathering it on your sandwich and eating it? It’s hard to say. Massachusetts and New Jersey are considering measures to clear up the confusion, following a California law that went into effect earlier this year. Several other states also are looking at labeling bills, as anti-food waste groups advocate for clearer signs to indicate whe...

Vice President Mike Pence stunned the space industry Tuesday when he announced the administration’s accelerated plans to return humans to the moon by 2024 — four years sooner than initially planned. Speaking before the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama, Tuesday afternoon, Pence did not mince words when laying out NASA’s new, quicker timeline for returning to the lunar surface “by any means necessary.”

It's 7.30 a.m., and you've just woken up. How many seconds into your day can you last without using Google? If you used the alarm clock on your phone that runs Google-owned Android, you've failed. If you're an information junkie who checks the news first thing, you've also probably failed. Most news sites — including this one — run Google-owned analytics or ad tools.

Officials in San Francisco have proposed a new law to ban e-cigarette sales until their health effects are evaluated by the US government. The law appears to be the first of its kind in the US and seeks to curb a rising usage by young people. Critics, however, say it will make it harder for people to kick addiction. A second city law would bar making, selling or distributing tobacco on city property and is aimed at an e-cigarette firm renting on Pier 70.

Cobalt glass beads found in Scandinavian Bronze Age tombs reveal trade connections between Egyptians and Mesopotamia 3,400 years ago — and similar religious rituals.

What keeps George Hotz, the enigmatic hacker and founder of self-driving startup Comma.ai, up at night is not whether his autonomous car company will be successful or what other entrepreneurial venture he might embark on next. No, instead, Hotz says he’s tortured by the possibility that all of us are in an advanced simulation observed by either an omnipotent extraterrestrial or supernatural being, or an artificial intelligence far beyond the realm of human conception and understanding.

Congressional investigators poring over the transcripts from Michael Cohen's testimony say President Trump appears to have engaged in crimes — and they now have an astonishing number of leads to follow. By the time Cohen’s televised session before Congress wrapped up Wednesday, he’d provided testimony and evidence suggesting Trump may have been involved in at least 11 different felonies, according to a VICE News review of the testimony and conversations with former prosecutors.

The US agency responsible for military cyber operations cut off internet connectivity at the Internet Research Agency in Russia on the day of the 2018 midterm elections, according to a report in The Washington Post on Tuesday. The US Cyber Command "basically took the IRA offline," according to an unnamed source that spoke with the Post.

The film, directed by Ryan Coogler with a predominantly black cast in a mainstream blockbuster, was already “popular” by box office standards. (Black Panther earned $1.3 billion worldwide.) It’s also not the first mainstream successful film to have awards potential. The distinction between what is considered “popular” and what is considered “awards worthy” seems to be a relatively recent development, and it’s one that Entertainment Weekly and The Take explore in the latest video ...