The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) this week confirmed that its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been hacked. An audit document from the U.S. Office of the Inspector General was published by NASA this week. It reveals that an unauthorized Raspberry Pi computer connected to the JPL servers was targeted by hackers, who then moved laterally further into the NASA network. How much further? Well, the hackers apparently got as far as the Deep Space Network (DSN) array of radio telescopes and numerous other JPL systems.

But if your neck hurts after hours of looking down at it, you might want to lie down on a pillow for a bit. By Kristina Killgrove.

More and more people are refusing to define themselves as either gay or straight – and from pop music to sitcoms, such fluidity is becoming increasingly visible, writes Hugh Montgomery

If you go to the beach, you’re likely to see some form of plastic pollution scattered in the waves or sprinkled among the sand grains. A bottle cap fragment here, a transparent piece of packaging there. But researchers have identified a new, and perhaps more permanent type of plastic pollution, one that incorporates itself right into the rocky shoreline: “plasticrust,” a veneer of plastic encrusted right onto wave-licked rocks.

People who are obese from childhood through to middle age are more than twice as likely to have difficulty with daily tasks such as lifting, climbing stairs and carrying shopping by the time they are 50, a new UCL study has found. 

In December 2018, scientists at Google AI ran a calculation on Google’s best quantum processor. They were able to reproduce the computation using a regular laptop. Then in January, they ran the same test on an improved version of the quantum chip. This time they had to use a powerful desktop computer to simulate the result. By February, there were no longer any classical computers in the building that could simulate their quantum counterparts. The researchers had to request time on Google’s enormous server network to do that.

Thousands of years ago, glaciers covered much of the planet. Oceans receded as water froze in massive sheets of ice blanketing the North American continent. As the ice age ended, glaciers melted. Massive river deltas flowed out across the continental shelf. The oceans rose, and fresh water was trapped in sediments below the waves. Discovered while drilling for oil offshore in the 1970s, scientists thought these “isolated” pockets of fresh water were a curiosity. They may instead prove to be a parched world’s newest source of fresh water.

Floating sunscreen, cloud brighteners and killer robots are just a few of the measures scientists are hoping will save the world's coral.

In a new survey of the sub-seafloor off the U.S. Northeast coast, scientists have made a surprising discovery: a gigantic aquifer of relatively fresh water trapped in porous sediments lying below the salty ocean.

The Curiosity mission’s scientists picked up the signal this week, and are seeking additional readings from the red planet.

Only a few months ago, NASA officials were still hashing out plans for a slow-and-steady return to the moon in 2028.

The chances of establishing a real-world Jurassic Park are slim. During the fossilization process, biological tissues degrade over millions of years, with some types of molecules breaking down faster than others. However, traces of biological material have been found inside some fossils

A new study shows the emotional costs of hiding your true identity.

A sign on an upside-down dumpster spelled the end of Pearl Pai’s long romance with plastics recycling. For years, Pai and her family generated almost no trash. She carefully washed, sorted and bagged hard-to-recycle items and drove them two towns over from her home in Berkeley, California, to the area’s best recycling center.

NASA's rover has found a surge in methane gas that suggests there might be recent organic activity.

Mars’s twin moons may soon get a visitor. We’ve never landed anything on Phobos and Deimos, but we have taken pictures of their surfaces from orbiters around Mars. Now, a mission headed by JAXA, the Japanese space agency, is set to launch a rover to one of these small moons in 2024 – the final destination is yet to be decided.

Double bad news for working Americans and their health. Not only do Americans work up to 50 hours a week, but a new study shows that working long hours increases stroke risk.

More than 100 millennia ago, people were roasting tubers over the fire, a culinary practice that fueled their bodies and may have aided their migrations.

A photograph taken by Nasa’s Curiosity rover on Mars has captured a mysterious bright glow on a distant Martian hillside. The black and white photograph shows the desert landscape with high rocky hills in the background. In front of the larger rock formations, a tiny elongated white blob appears to be streaking past.

Astronomers captured a first look at radiation emitted directly by Uranus’ rings. Scientists have known for a few decades that the planet has faint rings, but there’s a whole lot that remains mysterious about them—the rings’ composition and mass, and the sizes of their individual pieces. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom used two telescopes in Chile to measure radiation from the pieces that comprise Uranus’ rings, the first observations of the rings in radio and mid-infrared wavelengths.