For decades, rumors of alien spacecraft at Area 51 have captivated the public imagination. In what is now known as one of the most infamous government cover-ups, an absence of information fueled wild ...

During takeoff and landing, Concorde flew at a steep angle, with its front end tilted skyward and its tail pointing down. If a conventional plane were in this position, its nose would block the pilots ...

When we look at the world at the tiniest scales in the subatomic realm, things get weird – very weird. Welcome to the quantum universe, where particles can spin in two directions at once, observing ...

Below are excerpts from radio transmissions and video recorded on the day in May 1999 when NOVA-sponsored climbers discovered the body of George Leigh Mallory high on Mt. Everest. Mallory disappeared ...

Surprisingly little is known about the behavior of cars and drivers in uncontrolled, real-world accidents, despite rigorous testing in laboratory-controlled crashes. Now, a first-of-its-kind ...

"It's not easy being a public enemy," writes Neil deGrasse Tyson in his book The Pluto Files. When Neil's museum grouped Pluto not among the planets but rather with icy comets in an obscure region ...

View a slide show of the Yamato's last hours, from its initial sighting by U.S. forces to the cataclysmic explosion that sealed its fate.

A woman holds two cannonballs of different masses. One is 10 pounds; the other is 1 pound. She is about to drop both objects at the same time.

In September 2020, the Slater fire roared through the tiny northern California town of Happy Camp, destroying almost 200 homes. Like many of the megafires that have increasingly engulfed the state, ...

It’s not unusual for me to receive mail questioning quantum mechanics and special relativity. I’ll admit, these ideas can sound a bit crazy. For some people, these ideas are simply too ...

Elephants die; we all do. In elephants and some others, it matters who has died. It’s why they are “who” animals. The crucial importance of memory, learning, and leadership in a family’s survival is ...

In the 1960s, developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth had a breakthrough. The intimate bond between an infant and its caregiver, she realized, wasn’t an all-or-nothing relationship. All babies were ...