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Science & Technology

People visit the exhibits inside the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins, Thursday, July 20, 2023, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington. DNA research has found that our Homo sapiens ancestors mated with Neanderthals and Denisovans long ago.

We carry DNA from extinct cousins like Neanderthals. Science is now revealing their genetic legacy

People visit the exhibits inside the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins, Thursday, July 20, 2023, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington. DNA research has found that our Homo sapiens ancestors mated with Neanderthals and Denisovans long ago.

September 25, 2023, 9:22am Life

Neanderthals live on within us. Read story

A helicopter delivers a space capsule carrying NASA's first asteroid samples on Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, to a temporary clean room at Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah. The Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the capsule following a seven-year journey to asteroid Bennu and back.

NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

A helicopter delivers a space capsule carrying NASA's first asteroid samples on Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, to a temporary clean room at Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah. The Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the capsule following a seven-year journey to asteroid Bennu and back.

September 24, 2023, 4:20pm Latest News

NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey. Read story

In this photo provided by researchers, an excavation team uncovers a wooden structure found on a riverbed near a waterfall in Zambia in 2019. The pair of crossed logs may be the oldest evidence of early humans building with wood, nearly half a million years old, according to a study published Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2023 in the journal Nature.

This simple log structure may be the oldest example of early humans building with wood

In this photo provided by researchers, an excavation team uncovers a wooden structure found on a riverbed near a waterfall in Zambia in 2019. The pair of crossed logs may be the oldest evidence of early humans building with wood, nearly half a million years old, according to a study published Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2023 in the journal Nature.

September 23, 2023, 6:02am Life

Researchers have uncovered a simple structure from the Stone Age that may be the oldest evidence yet of early humans building with wood. Read story

FILE - The sun sets beyond the downtown skyline of Kansas City, Mo., as the autumnal equinox marks the first day of fall Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013. During the equinox, the Earth's axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight.

The fall equinox is here. What does that mean?

FILE - The sun sets beyond the downtown skyline of Kansas City, Mo., as the autumnal equinox marks the first day of fall Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013. During the equinox, the Earth's axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight.

September 22, 2023, 8:45am Life

Fall is in the air — officially. Read story

Edgard Boqu?n, a project leader working with Doctors Without Borders, holds a glass jar filled with mosquitoes before their release in neighborhoods rife with dengue, in a facility in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. The mosquitoes come from eggs, produced in a World Mosquito Program bio factory to carry the bacteria Wolbachia, which interrupts the transmission of dengue.

Special mosquitoes are being bred to fight dengue. How the old enemies are now becoming allies

Edgard Boqu?n, a project leader working with Doctors Without Borders, holds a glass jar filled with mosquitoes before their release in neighborhoods rife with dengue, in a facility in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. The mosquitoes come from eggs, produced in a World Mosquito Program bio factory to carry the bacteria Wolbachia, which interrupts the transmission of dengue.

September 17, 2023, 6:00am Latest News

For decades, preventing dengue fever in Honduras has meant teaching people to fear mosquitoes and avoid their bites. Now, Hondurans are being educated about a potentially more effective way to control the disease — and it goes against everything they’ve learned. Read story

A drone image captures a grateful message scrawled in a vineyard in the Lodi, Calif., region by growers who collaborated with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on research to detect a crop-destroying virus.

NASA sees grape disease from sky

A drone image captures a grateful message scrawled in a vineyard in the Lodi, Calif., region by growers who collaborated with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on research to detect a crop-destroying virus.

September 16, 2023, 6:05am Nation & World

Cutting-edge NASA imaging technology can detect early signs of a plant virus that, if unaddressed, often proves devastating for wineries and grape growers, new research has found. Read story

Ig Nobels recognize repurposing dead spiders, licking rocks

September 14, 2023, 7:39pm Life

Counting nose hairs in cadavers, repurposing dead spiders and explaining why scientists lick rocks, are among the winning achievements in this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for humorous scientific feats, organizers announced Thursday. Read story

Astronaut Frank Rubio floats inside the cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world." (NASA)

NASA astronaut Rubio breaks U.S. record for longest spaceflight

Astronaut Frank Rubio floats inside the cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world." (NASA)

September 12, 2023, 4:05pm Nation & World

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio now holds the record for the longest United States spaceflight. Read story

Spider expert Rod Crawford sits Aug. 20 in his lab at the University of Washington Burke Museum in Seattle. Crawford took the photo of the giant house spider that fills his screen. The giant house spider matures in August and goes in search of a mate, leading many people to see "more" of them in their living spaces.

UW expert: Western Washington’s spiders are nothing to fear

Spider expert Rod Crawford sits Aug. 20 in his lab at the University of Washington Burke Museum in Seattle. Crawford took the photo of the giant house spider that fills his screen. The giant house spider matures in August and goes in search of a mate, leading many people to see "more" of them in their living spaces.

September 12, 2023, 5:55am Life

I survived my most harrowing roommate experience in August 2017, subletting a room in a Happy Valley, Ore., apartment. Claire, the girl who lived in the bedroom across from me, who was kind and courteous and rarely home thanks to our opposite work schedules, was innocent. The roommates in question… Read story

Update your iPhone: Apple just pushed out a significant security update

September 8, 2023, 10:30am Business

Apple released a significant security update for iPhones and iPads Thursday to patch newly discovered security vulnerabilities in the devices’ system software. Read story