Popular brain-imaging techniques may be painting a misleading picture of brain activity, according to a new study.

Infections could be treated by adding more bacteria, say researchers who have shown that cooperation between microbes is undermined outside the bounds of the Petri dish by a few 'cheats'.

The black hole has a troublesome sibling, the naked singularity. Physicists have long thought--hoped--it could never exist. But could it?

A new NASA-funded study details what might happen to our modern, high-tech society in the event of a 'super solar flare' followed by an extreme geomagnetic storm. Some of the conclusions might surprise you.

An international team of researchers has discovered a puzzling surplus of high-energy electrons bombarding Earth from space. The source of these cosmic rays is unknown, but it must be close to the solar system and it could be made of dark matter.

Researchers have discovered 'magnetic portals' forming high above Earth that can briefly connect our planet to the Sun. Not only are the portals common, one space physicist contends they form twice as often as anyone had previously imagined.

In seeming defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, nature is filled with examples of order emerging from chaos. A new theoretical framework resolves the apparent paradox

Last month when scientists switched on the Large Hadron Collider, the world did not come to an end. In today's story, a particle physicist explains why not--and why Earth is safe from black holes when the collider is reactivated in the months ahead.

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury and photographed a broad swath of never-before-seen terrain. The first of more than 1,200 high-resolution images are arriving back at Earth now.

Scientists have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision, and they find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin "cantaloupe skin" that increases its apparent oblateness.