Mapping the Creatures Living Beneath Our Feet

A new atlas catalogs the strange and spectacular species that live in the soil.

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Afraid of floods and hackers? Put your data in space

Satellite-based data centers with room for petabytes of data may start orbiting Earth as early as 2019. But when it comes to keeping secrets safe from the long arm of the law, the black void may not be far enough.

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DNA 'tape recorder' to trace cell history

Researchers invent a DNA "tape recorder" that can trace the family history of every cell in a body.

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Some women regret their abortions. That doesn't mean others shouldn't have the choice

This week, the wife of a Republican legislator did something you might find shocking: she wrote about having an abortion. Stephanie Chatfield, who is married to Michigan’s state representative Lee Chatfield, posted on Facebook about ending a pregnancy in high school after she was sexually assaulted at a party. “To tell you the truth, I desperately wish that I had the courage as a teenage girl to accept and welcome my child into this world,” she wrote. “But I didn’t, and I made a decision that I’ve thought about and regretted nearly every day since.”

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Rosetta spacecraft finds key building blocks for life in a comet

Scientists discover ingredients regarded as crucial to the origins of life on a comet the European Space Agency has been probing for two years.

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Stars with planets on strange orbits: what’s going on?

Many of the new planets found in other star systems have some extraordinary orbital behavior. So what's going on?

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Some Humans Migrated Back To Africa 45,000 Years Ago

Our species evolved in Africa. But after examining the genome of a 35,000-year-old human skull unearthed in Romania, researchers say some populations migrated back to northern Africa from western Asia during the Early Upper Paleolithic starting around 45,000 years ago. The findings were published in Scientific Reports last week. 

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