Salts that de-ice roads, parking lots and sidewalks keep people safe in winter. But new research shows they are contributing to a sharp and widely rising problem across the U.S. At least a third of the rivers and streams in the country have gotten saltier in the past 25 years. And by 2100, more than half of them may contain at least 50 percent more salt than they used to. Increasing salinity will not just affect freshwater plants and animals but human lives as well—notably, by affecting drinki...

Space flight does not have a detrimental effect on a major part of the human immune system, according to new research which may alter how astronauts approach future missions. Scientists tested blood samples taken from 23 crew members who spent six months at the International Space Station (ISS), taken before, during and after their trips. Researchers examining the samples discovered that time in space caused no changes to levels of B-cell immunity - the white blood cells that produce antibodies ...

The “Missing Pathways to 1.5°C” report is part of a wider body of scientific research connecting the dots between eating animals and our rapidly changing climate. Report co-author and College of the Atlantic professor Doreen Stabinsky, Ph.D., told me that climate scientists are not so much frustrated as “really freaked out” by the inaction of policy makers and the general public, who continue to eat animal-based diets.

The icy realm of Greenland is getting hot under the collar. The melting of Greenland's massive ice sheet has now accelerated, scientists announced Wednesday, and shows no signs of slowing down, according to a new study. "Melting of the Greenland ice sheet has gone into overdrive," said Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University and lead author of the study. "Greenland melt is adding to sea level more than any time during the last three and a half centuries, if not thousa...

Chefs, artists, and loved ones pay tribute to the late culinary icon.

What can you see in the night sky this season? The featured graphic gives a few highlights for Earth's northern hemisphere. Viewed as a clock face centered at the bottom, early (northern) winter sky events fan out toward the left, while late winter events are projected toward the right. Objects relatively close to Earth are illustrated, in general, as nearer to the cartoon figure with the telescope at the bottom center -- although almost everything pictured can be seen without a telescope. ...

Reports suggest that there was friction between Netflix and Disney over the season lengths of their collaborative Marvel television series. Audiences were shocked by the recent wave of cancellations announced for the Marvel/Netflix series, which saw the end of Luke Cage and Iron Fist after two seasons. Daredevil was also canceled, even following a critically acclaimed third season.

Scientists are developing flexible, thin-films that will be more resilient and have wider uses than current solar technology

Three academics are launching a new journal in which arguments can be made anonymously. But is separating ideas from their authors the best way forward? Jeff McMahan is a professor of moral philosophy at Oxford University. He’s a snowy-haired American, originally from South Carolina, and he works in a large, dark oak-panelled, and not very warm study in Corpus Christi college. It’s a room with an illustrious past.

It’s been a wild year for science fiction enthusiasts, as real life continues looking more like something out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel. Case in point: we just sent a robot to Mars and received a photo from it 8 minutes later. Here are our 10 favorite sci-fi books of 2018, from small-press debuts to Big Five bestsellers.

It kicked off at a urinal in Cheapside, and ended in a bloody and brutal murder. Poor aim has been responsible for many unexpected deaths, but perhaps none more so than that of Philip of Ashendon. One of a brutal range of fatal scuffles, revenge killings and infanticides recorded by London coroners in the early 1300s, Philip’s demise is among those to feature in a new interactive map that uses death to breathe life into medieval London.

If NASA's stunning landing of a car-sized robot on Mars didn't already whet your appetite for space exploration this week, mark your calendar for 2 p.m. EST on Thursday. That's when NASA plans to give an update about a program that aims to land privately developed spacecraft on the moon. "We are announcing new moon partnerships with American companies," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, tweeted on Tuesday. "The US is returning to the surface of the moon, a...

A NASA spacecraft's six-month journey to Mars neared its dramatic grand finale Monday in what scientists and engineers hoped would be a soft precision landing on flat red plains. The InSight lander aimed for an afternoon touchdown, as anxiety built among those involved in the $1 billion international effort.

Conspiracies surrounding NASA’s moon missions nearly 50 years ago are common in Russia.

Ancient continents were found under Antarctic ice, thanks to old data from a now-dead European satellite. New analysis of data from the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission has revealed rocky zones called "cratons" in the Earth's lithosphere, a zone between our planet's crust and mantle. GOCE plunged into Earth's atmosphere five years ago this month after the craft ran out of orbital-maneuvering fuel. While scientists were unable to pr...

In a video that looks like something a special effects shop would produce, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst has captured one of the most remarkable views of a rocket launch we’ve ever seen. This extraordinary timelapse shows the launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket that took flight on November 16, 2018 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. A Progress MS-10 spacecraft filled with 5,652 pounds (2,564 kg) worth of cargo sat atop the rocket, which is seen en route to the International Space Station...

An unprecedented international grand committee comprising 22 representatives from seven parliaments will meet in London next week to put questions to Facebook about the online fake news crisis and the social network’s own string of data misuse scandals. But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg won’t be providing any answers. The company has repeatedly refused requests for him to answer parliamentarians’ questions.