Cerro Armazones is a crumbling dome of rock that dominates the parched peaks of the Chilean coastal range north of Santiago. Even the views look alien, with the surrounding boulder-strewn desert bearing a remarkable resemblance to the landscape of Mars. Dramatic change is on its way ...
They were some of the strangest animals to walk the Earth: wombats as big as hippos, sloths larger than bears, four-tusked elephants and an armadillo that would have dwarfed a VW Beetle. They flourished for millions of years, then vanished from our planet just ...
Leipzig's Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology is a striking edifice. Set among the drab housing blocks of former East Germany, the building, erected in 2003 and made largely of glass, curves gently like a banana around the edge of a suburban crescent. There is a ...
Deniz Safak was 5 years old when he first displayed symptoms of the disease that would later take his life. "He started being sick and had intense, stroke-like seizures," his mother, Ruth, recalled. Doctors were baffled by the boy's condition, and it took months before ...
European scientists are preparing to launch a probe that will transform our understanding of the galaxy. The spacecraft, called Gaia, will carry the world's biggest, most accurate camera, which it will use to pinpoint more than a billion stars with unprecedented precision and create ...
For a ship on a mission of worldwide importance, the Yong Sheng is a distinctly unimpressive sight. The gray and green hull of the 19,000-ton cargo vessel, operated by China's state-owned Cosco Group, is streaked with rust, while its cargo of steel and heavy ...
Nestled below the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory outside Pasadena has a surprisingly low-tech feel. For more than 40 years, space missions to the planets have been controlled from its operations rooms, yet the place is still striking for ...
The idea would make headlines around the world and bring tears of joy to the planet's journalists. An adorable baby woolly mammoth, tottering on its newborn legs, is introduced to the media. Cloned from a few cells scraped from the permafrost of Siberia, the little ...
For a site symbolizing a future that will either poison our countryside or bring us unlimited amounts of cheap, pollution-free energy, Elswick, in northeast England, is a distinctly underwhelming destination for a visit. The gas-power station, owned by the U.K. drilling company Cuadrilla, lies ...
In 1961, Oxford archaeologists uncovered a pit at the site of Gen. Gnaeus Julius Agricola's headquarters at Inchtuthil, the site of a Roman legionary fortress, in Scotland. Unsavory Caledonians had made his troops' position untenable. STUFF MATTERS: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that ...
