Wired Science

Could brain tissue from the exhumed body of an NFL linebacker who died more than a year ago help his family win a legal case – and presumably a pile of money — from his former team? That’s one of …

Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. This stunning false-color view spans about 40 light-years across the region, constructed using infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Compared to …

The largest sunspot group of the solar cycle unleashed a large (X1.2 class) flare just when it was facing right towards Earth (Jan. 7, 2014). The flare was associated with a coronal mass ejection that was heading in our direction …

Floating at the center of this new Hubble image is a lidless purple eye, staring back at us through space. This ethereal object, known officially as [SBW2007] 1 but sometimes nicknamed SBW1, is a nebula with a giant star at …

I work on images like this for the thrill of discovery. Sure, there are Hubble Space Telescope images of this protoplanetary nebula… but what does it “really” look like using a small (by comparison) ground-based telescope and using full color …

Bacteria, yeast and other organisms that are under stress undergo more frequent mutations, which might be an evolutionary mechanism to help them cope with changing environments.

This is the colossal Steller’s sea cow, a cousin of the manatee that grew to a mind-boggling 33 feet long and 24,000 pounds. For perspective, 24,000 pounds is equal to 20 manatees, or four killer whales, or one school bus, …

The Hubble telescope captured a display of starlight, glowing gas, and silhouetted dark clouds of interstellar dust in this 4-foot-by-8-foot image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. NGC 1300 is considered to be prototypical of barred spiral galaxies. Barred …

Scarlet macaws are beautiful, rainbow-colored birds. In Peru, scientists have been studying the same population for nearly three decades. But a macaw’s life is treacherous from day one — especially for the chicks who aren’t born first.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, is seen on Jan. 14, 2014, erupting away from the sun in this image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The sun is obscured to make the dimmer solar atmosphere more visible. The …

Solving mysteries in the Amazon rainforest — like the one about those small, silky towers — is not easy. Working in such an unpredictable environment requires patience, the ability to improvise, and a whole lot of bug spray.

This wide-field view shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming along with cluster of brilliant stars that have already burst out of their dusty stellar nursery. This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 …

What has a terrifying smile, crawls along the ground like a spider, can open doors, and might one day save your life? The dextrous and multi-talented RoboSimian.

This false color Magellan image shows a portion of Leda Planitia (plains) in the northern hemisphere of Venus, centered at 41 degrees north latitude, 52 degrees east longitude. The area is 220 kilometers (135 miles) wide and 275 kilometers (170 …

This new Hubble image shows a cosmic creepy-crawly known as the Tarantula Nebula in infrared light. This region is full of star clusters, glowing gas, and thick dark dust.

The vortex at Saturn’s north pole — seen here in the infrared — takes on the menacing look of something from the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. But really, of course, it’s just another example of the amazing, mesmerizing meteorology …

The vibrant magentas and blues in this Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy M83 reveal that the galaxy is ablaze with star formation. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death. The galaxy, …

What’s it like to live in space? As this new NASA video shows, you get to float around, talk to folks on Earth, and your personal space is about not much bigger than you are.

Cyanobacteria account for about 10% of all photosynthesis on Earth, which forms the base of the food chain and provides the atmosphere with oxygen. Now, researchers have found that cyanobacteria may play an even bigger role in the ecosystem than …

These are the stomatopods, some 550 known species of mantis shrimp, which range from less than an inch long to well over a foot. They’re feisty, beautifully complex creatures that strike so quickly that they momentarily superheat the water around …