NASA orders a second SpaceX crew mission to the ISS

NASA has ordered a second mission from SpaceX to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The order is part of the Commercial Cr...

Early animals might have caused a mass extinction event, says new evidence

New fossils  discovered in the southwest African country of Namibia reinforce a theory that Earth's first mass extinction was caused b...

Watch SpaceX fire up the Falcon 9 rocket that landed in May

SpaceX has landed five Falcon 9 rockets since the company started trying in 2015 , but yesterday it put one of them through the first major...

The first mosquito-borne case of Zika has occurred in the US

For the first time, the Zika virus might have been transmitted from mosquitoes to humans inside the United States, according to Florida Gov...

Claims that 'deep ocean water' rehydrates athletes twice as fast don’t hold up

Anyone looking to enter the growing and crowded premium water market has to differentiate themselves somehow, whether it's with a uniqu...

Watch an Atlas V rocket launch a secret spy satellite into space

This morning, an Atlas V rocket will blast off into space from Cape Canaveral, taking a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissanc...

The ice bucket challenge actually did help ALS research

A group of researchers have identified a gene implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that attacks neurons in the brain and ...

More cancer-causing chemicals found in electronic cigarettes

The vapor from electronic cigarettes contains two previously unidentified chemicals that can cause cancer, according to a new study. The ne...

SpaceX's Red Dragon mission will cost around $320 million, NASA hints

SpaceX’s upcoming Red Dragon mission —  the company’s plan to send one of its Dragon capsules on Mars in 2018 — is estimated to cost aroun...

New superbug-fighting antibiotic discovered up humans' noses

Believe it or not, some of us are carrying drug-resistant bacteria around in our noses; these colonies make infection more likely. But scie...

The atmosphere above Jupiter's Great Red Spot is hotter than the rest of the planet

The upper atmosphere above Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — the huge storm that has been raging for centuries on the gas giant — is much hotter t...

This flower smells like a rotting corpse, and you can watch it bloom live right now

For 10 years the New York Botanical Garden has devoted time and resources to the Amorphophallus titanum , a single towering flower that whe...

This Bill Gates-backed fund wants to 'disrupt' vaccine delivery in poor countries

At the very top of a tall glass building, in a room overlooking Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc, a group of entrepreneurs are working on new way...

Dolly's sheep clones are doing just fine

Twenty years after Dolly the Sheep was born out of a test tube, four sheep cloned from her DNA are healthy and aging normally, according to...

David Chang adds plant-based 'Impossible Burger' to Nishi menu

Bleeding veggie burger company Impossible Foods — a Silicon Valley darling that’s raised more than $150 million from big shot investors lik...

Let's all say goodbye to the Philae comet lander, which we'll never hear from again

There’s still some time left  before Europe’s Rosetta mission comes to an end in September , but it’s already time to say goodbye to the mi...

Something is wiping away all of the craters on dwarf planet Ceres

Ever since NASA’s Dawn spacecraft started snapping pictures of the dwarf planet Ceres in the Asteroid Belt in 2015, scientists have been pe...

The US's first double hand transplant patient says the hands don't work at all

Jeff Kepner, the first American to receive a double hand transplant seven years ago, now says the hands have never functioned at all. "...

This short documentary shows how astronomers hope to find the next habitable planets

Just a couple of decades ago, the very idea that there were other planets orbiting stars throughout the universe was something that belonge...

The Verge Review of Animals: the chicken supreme

Additional testing rules Colorado town’s water THC free

Residents of Hugo, Colorado can resume drinking their tap water. That’s the verdict after fears that the town’s municipal water supply had ...

Groot and Rocket Raccoon are the stars of this year’s official space station lab patch

Perhaps the best perk of working on a NASA mission is getting the official stitched mission patch. Nearly every project at the space agency...

In Colorado, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient may have made it into the water supply

The tap water in a small town in Colorado may be contaminated with THC, the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana. For this reason, resid...

SpaceX recently landed another rocket — here's what it was like to see it

When SpaceX successfully  pulled off its first Falcon 9 rocket landing in December , I knew it was something I had to see for myself someda...

The space auction where a Sputnik model goes for $269,000

For only $269,000, you can buy a full-scale model of the Sputnik-1 satellite, made by the USSR to test the very first satellite humans lau...

NASA's Curiosity Rover now decides which Mars rocks to shoot all by itself

It's good to remember, sometimes, that despite the hell and misery that is the year 2016, we still have a robot on Mars that shoots roc...

First CRISPR trial in humans will attempt to battle lung cancer

The first human trial of cells that have been tweaked by the genome-editing technique CRISPR will begin in China in August, Nature reports...

Boobs are perfect safety devices, men determine

Atomic memory could one day solve your storage problems

Data storage is rapidly becoming a major pain point in the technology industry, especially as our apps and media start to reach higher and ...

2016 is (predictably) set to be the hottest year on record

If temperature trends continue, 2016 is on track to be the planet’s hottest year on record,  according to NASA . The first half of the year...

Smart stitches send doctors information on wounds as they heal

Visions of the future of medicine often involve digital sensors that constantly monitor patients, but not many people imagine that these se...

New probiotic seeds grow crops that require less water to survive

Today, AGTech startup  Indigo launched a probiotic-covered seed called Indigo Cotton, which promises to reduce how much water a cotton pla...

Watch and listen to NASA cracking 8-foot barrels to test new space materials

When it comes to finding the best new materials for building rockets, NASA has an old-fashioned approach: apply pressure and  see what brea...

Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle crash landed on purpose and did just fine

Last month, private spaceflight company Blue Origin  intentionally crash-landed part of its New Shepard rocket. The idea was to see if the...

This new brain map shows almost 100 areas never described before

You don’t have to be a neurosurgeon to know it’s hard to get to the right place without a good map. But neuroscientists have been blunderin...

Peek inside the Apollo 11 command module with this new 3D scan

Today marks the the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, and you can celebrate by taking a virtual tour inside the NASA spacecr...

How does the International Olympic Committee solve a problem like Russian doping?

Today the International Olympic Committee  delayed its decision to ban Russia from this summer's Olympic games. The announcement follo...

SpaceX is looking for two extra landing pads so it can land three rockets at once

Yesterday, SpaceX  successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket after using it for a supply mission to the International Spa...

Researchers use tough sea slug muscles to build a biohybrid robot

We're a long way from building the half-human, half-machine cyborgs of science fiction, but we are taking small (very slow) steps in th...

Former wrestlers sue WWE over brain injuries

More than 50 former wrestlers and performers have filed suit against the WWE, claiming that it hid the risk of brain trauma and failed to p...

Navy sonar that harms whales and dolphins was improperly approved, US court finds

The US Navy is now using a particular type of sonar in more than half of the world’s ocean under an illegal permit. That sonar harms marine...

Russia ran a state-sponsored doping program at the Olympics, report confirms

A  new report released today confirms allegations that Russia operated a state-sponsored doping program during the 2014 Winter Olympics in...

These are the spectacular photos from last night’s SpaceX rocket launch and landing

SpaceX has released a collection of high-resolution photos of last night's mission to resupply the International Space Station. The im...

Apple partners with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline for first clinical study

In March last year, Apple unveiled  ResearchKit — a medical platform designed to turn the iPhone into a diagnostic tool for clinical trial...

SpaceX made a Pokémon Go joke at the end of its rocket launch broadcast

SpaceX just launched and landed another Falcon 9 rocket, the fifth time the company has pulled off the feat. But this launch was different ...

SpaceX successfully launches crucial docking adapter to the International Space Station

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket  successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida this morning , lofting the company’s Dragon cargo capsule into...

SpaceX successfully lands Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground for the second time

SpaceX has successfully landed another Falcon 9 rocket after launching the vehicle into space this evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Sh...

Tonight's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch: start time, live stream, and what to expect

Tonight, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is slated to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying nearly 5,000 pounds of cargo to the Internat...

SpaceX knows which of its Falcon 9 rockets it will reuse first

SpaceX has picked out which one of its landed Falcon 9 rockets it wants to re-fly for the first time. The plan is to  reuse the vehicle tha...

Verge ESP: Gotta catch 'em all!

So Niantic released a broken, buggy game that immediately captured both Liz's and Emily's hearts: Pokémon Go . It is funny, though,...

Untreatable gonorrhea: coming soon to genitalia near you

The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea may be becoming resistant to the only two antibiotics left to treat it. The disheartening news c...

Zika can be sexually transmitted from women to men, CDC reports

The first documented case of the Zika virus being sexually transmitted from a woman to a man has been reported in New York City,  according...