The surface of asteroid Bennu is more like a plastic ball pit than the Moon.

The zebras were originally part of a newspaper tycoon’s private zoo. Now they roam the San Simeon grasslands, growing in numbers. 

A neuroscientist explains how to master your focus.

It could permanently lower cholesterol — and permanently reduce your risk of having a heart attack.

If Rome was not built in a day, why do you think you can be?

Just as there are many types of believers, there’s not only one type of atheist.

The emergence of life in the universe is as certain as the emergence of matter, gravity, and the stars. Life is the universe developing a memory, and our chemical detection system could find it.

There are two conceptions of free will: “straight” and “mixed.”

The history of music from bone flutes to Beyoncé.

From superstition to religion, we are surrounded by supernatural thinking. Is that a bad thing?

Long thought incapable of regenerating, we now know that brain cells can grow and reorganize. That, it turns out, is a mixed blessing.

There are so many problems, all across planet Earth, that harm and threaten humanity. Why invest in researching the Universe?

Your subjective experience might not end the moment your heart stops, research on near-death experiences suggests.

Lasers are all around you. This ubiquitous technology came from our understanding of quantum physics.

A new study shows that political partisans are more likely to remember things that didn’t happen — as long as it fits their narrative.

A new bridge joins a divided Croatia, but it cuts Bosnia out of Europe — literally and figuratively. A bridge meant to unite also divides.

Ever since the start of the hot Big Bang, time ticks forward as the Universe expands. But could time ever run backward, instead?

Searching for dark matter, the XENON collaboration found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Here’s why that’s an extraordinary feat.

A second Enlightenment would have a far bigger task: Saving civilization itself.

Proponents of transhumanism make big promises, such as a future in which we upload our minds into a supercomputer. But there is a fatal flaw in this argument: reductionism.

Escape a mental rut by using nostalgia.

Patients with amygdala damage rejected the widely accepted answer to the infamous “trolley problem,” saying that it “hurts too much.”

Turning off a gene called “Myc” has a surprising effect in male fruit flies: They start courting other males.

For over three decades, toxic proteins were believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease. However, recent studies suggest it might be metabolic reprogramming.

It might be good for your memory.

Quantum communication offers a surer path to sending an interstellar message, as well as receiving one. But can we do it?

“Supernatural thinking is actually an important part of being a complete human being.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss Enlightenment philosopher who praised a simple life and inspired the worst of the French Revolution.

That Nietzsche quote might not mean what you think it does.

Music and sounds only seem to reduce pain in mice when played at a specific volume.