On Monday, the 2014 winners of the Google Science Fair, an international competition for 13- to 18-year-olds, will be announced. All the finalists are scarily impressive, but Kenneth Shinozuka, winner of the Scientific American Science in Action Award, st

Nasa has approved construction of the world's most powerful rocket designed to take astronauts to Mars. The $7bn (￡4.2bn) Space Launch System (SLS) is scheduled to blast off for a test launch in November 2018. It will potentially take humans t

But it's not a miracle. It's science. There are many famous trees. The Tree of Life, which stands alone in the middle of a barren desert; General Sherman, the world’s largest living tree; and Yggdrasil, the World-Tree of Norse myth. Add artist S

Racetrack Playa is home to an enduring Death Valley mystery. Littered across the surface of this dry lake, also called a “playa,” are hundreds of rocks – some weighing as much as 320 kilograms (700 pounds) – that seem to have been dragged across the groun