Scientific American.com

Tennis players can return high-speed balls using a combination of reaction and predicting the future

The inaugural launch and first-stage booster recovery of China’s Long March 10B rocket intensifies the nation’s spaceflight rivalry with the U.S.

This climate system is tied to more powerful typhoons, as well as famine and wildfires

A proposed rule change could expose more Americans to higher doses of radiation from nuclear facilities

Efforts to revive the thylacine and woolly mammoth are forcing conservationists to face a long-overdue debate over what kind of natural world we want to build

Other planets have moons, too. Do they get eclipses like we do?

A strange class of comet could explain the enigmatic behavior of ‘Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object—and even shed light on how Earth became habitable

A recent study in the journal Nature carries cosmos-quaking implications for our understanding of the universe—except a new preprint says that it’s wrong

Living at altitudes with less than half the oxygen at sea level, these mice have adapted to their environment in unique ways

Cyclosporiasis case numbers have skyrocketed from several dozen nationwide in June to now more than 1,000 in the state of Michigan alone

New research identifies five distinct sleep subtypes, revealing links between brain patterns, behavior and health

A rare eruption in the Indian Ocean let researchers capture one of the clearest views yet of a seafloor spreading event

A controversial geoengineering proposal suggests that brightening clouds off South America could weaken a burgeoning El Niño, but major technical and ethical questions remain

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is an independent group that offers guidance on what health screenings and medications health insurance should cover

This one-ton elephant seal has gone viral for smashing into cars and infrastructure, but biologists have a more poignant explanation for his behavior

A best-yet measurement of one of general relativity’s most mind-boggling effects is “another feather in Einstein’s cap”

For almost 60 years, a global ban on nuclear weapons in space has held up. But the growing number of satellites and increasing geopolitical tension has scientists worried the moratorium could fail

As rainfall intensifies with climate change, waste flushed out to sea could attract more sharks, putting beachgoers at risk

To align Coordinated Universal Time with Earth’s rotation, a second occasionally gets added to the year. That may change in 2027

Steel support columns in the Midtown building, which is being converted from offices into apartments, may have been overloaded, experts say