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June 12, 2013
Mars' surface is streaked with furrows and ditches across its rusty red soil, mimicking our planet's river plains. But unlike Earth, Mars has no surface rivers or streams that would leave such marks. A new NASA report has determined these gullies are a result of cascades of dry ice running across the planet's surface.
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June 5, 2013
Jamie Munkatchy ignites a passion for science and innovation in her students at Validus Preparatory Academy. The Bronx chemistry teacher wants to connect their science education to real world problems. "I'm trying to develop a pipeline of kids from the Bronx to go into the STEM fields."
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May 22, 2013
A special kind of thunderstorm called a "supercell thunderstorm" produces tornadoes. The wind shear creates a horizontal spinning effect that veers from a southeast to a southwesterly direction, increasing in speed as it rises.
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May 8, 2013
In Guatemala, investigators using forensic science have compelling evidence that thousands of innocent indigenous Ixil Mayans were the target of extermination in the 1980s. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how murder, politics and science intersect in the genocide trial of former leader Efrain Rios Montt.
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May 1, 2013
When it comes to explaining how Antarctica is responding to climate change, the picture isn't always clear. While parts of the polar continent's glaciers have been lost, the sea ice is growing. Harsh conditions and a short satellite record makes piecing together the puzzle of Antarctica's climate a challenge to scientists.
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April 24, 2013
Jerriel Hall has taken his third grade class to another planet for a day. Their mission: review their math and physics skills before their high-stakes standardized tests. The result is an out-of-this-world experience for the students.
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April 17, 2013
By understanding the science of light diffusion, visual effects artists have made great strides in the last decade in their effort to create digital characters with realistic-looking skin.
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April 10, 2013
More than 1 million visitors flock to Washington, D.C. every spring to see the cherry blossoms. But the 100-year old trees need to be preserved. Scientists have been cloning the trees to save their heritage.
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April 3, 2013
Scientists are scaling back medical research due to sequestration cuts.
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March 27, 2013
In his upcoming solo album, "Dark Matter," Wu-Tang Clan's GZA rhymes about the Big Bang. The legendary rapper performed his new material at Bronx Compass High School, where he hopes to pique students' interest in science by introducing hip-hop to the lesson plan.
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March 20, 2013
Next year marks the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton's historic, ill-fated and ultimately failed expedition to become the first person to transverse Antarctica. Hari Sreenivasan spoke with one adventurer, Joanne Davies, who plans to finish what Shackleton started.
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March 13, 2013
On tonight's NewsHour, Miles O'Brien reports on the decline of Hinkley, Calif., the town featured in the movie Erin Brockovich. Here's the not-so-Hollywood version of what really happened in Hinkley and beyond.
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March 6, 2013
The scientific community has been worried about contaminating solar system bodies with Earth life for a long time. Today NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection, and with each new space mission, hundreds of scientists and engineers are responsible for ensuring the spacecraft we're sending into outer space are "clean."
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Feb. 6, 2013
In New York city, children growing up in different neighborhoods spitting distance of each other have a threefold difference in risk for developing asthma. So why the disparity? Cockroaches, pollution and genes, a new study finds.
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Jan. 30, 2013
Are wildfires and industrial ash speeding up ice melt in Greenland? Jason Box, an ice climatologist, wants to find out. But when the research grant didn't come through, he started the Dark Snow project to raise the money for an expedition.
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Jan. 23, 2013
Schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses typically manifest during young adulthood or late adolescence. But what causes a person to develop these diseases? Are there triggers? And if we knew what they were, could the illness be prevented?
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Jan. 10, 2013
Little-known winter fact: Ski moguls, those tricky-to-navigate bumps on well-traveled runs, migrate slowly uphill. David Bahr, an avid skier and professor of physics and computational sciences at Colorado's Regis University, had suspected for some time that the moguls he slalomed moved up the mountain, so he tested the theory.
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Jan. 3, 2013
Science correspondent Miles O'Brien plunged into a muck of that which rhymes with "it" to investigate our ailing sewage system. Here's his story of what happened underground. Don't miss his full report on tonight's NewsHour.
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Dec. 20, 2012
A University of Maryland astrophysicist makes a discovery that could change the way we understand the behavior of black holes.
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Nov. 29, 2012
After five years spent documenting the behavior of glaciers, photographer James Balog has concluded that the term "glacial pace" is an oxymoron. His teammates saw a chunk of ice roughly the size of southern Manhattan -- from 34th Street to Battery Park -- break free from the Ilulissat Glacier in Greenland and bob out to sea.
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Nov. 15, 2012
How much sleep do we need? Can we cram the proverbial eight hours into six? Miles O'Brien will tackle these questions on tonight's NewsHour broadcast. But first, we take you behind the scenes and into the water for today's Science Thursday.
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Nov. 7, 2012
Forecasting tropical storms like Hurricane Sandy takes a tremendous amount of computing power. The supercomputer at NOAA's environmental prediction center processes 74 trillion calculations per second. We took a trip to forecasting lab this week to see what happens behind the scenes.
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Nov. 1, 2012
State officials in Maine are blaming a sharp rise in the number of children entering state custody on the street drug known as bath salts. An additional 200 children entered the state's foster care system due to neglect in the past 11 months, and the state is requesting $4.2 million in additional funding to tackle the problem.
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Oct. 25, 2012
You can thank your grandmother for humans' longer life spans. A new study finds that by caring for her grandchildren, grandma may have changed human evolution and allowed us to live longer than other primates.
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Oct. 18, 2012
Some 250 million years ago, equatorial oceans teemed with mollusks, clams, blue-green algae and microsnails. Fierce, stifling heat proved lethal to most other marine animals and plants, and the land -- then lumped into the giant supercontinent Pangea -- was bleak and largely lifeless.
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Oct. 11, 2012
How much silk does Spider-Man need to swing through New York City? Could the Dark Knight leap off Gotham skyscrapers and survive? Superheroes may defy many of the laws of physics, but one man is trying to bring science fiction movies a little closer to science fact.
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Oct. 4, 2012
Scientists, artists, engineers and builders converged at New York City's 2012 Maker Faire last week to celebrate a playful love of invention. The Maker Faire, a family-focused event, is rooted deeply in science, and holds as part of its key philosophy, a desire to inspire kids to create things as a way to embrace science.
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Oct. 4, 2012
Scientists, artists, engineers and builders converged at New York City's 2012 Maker Faire last week to celebrate a playful love of science, invention and building things. View photos from the event in this slide show and our 2011 piece on the movement its rooted in.
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Sept. 27, 2012
With such a small window of fertility and a high rate of failure, zoos are trying to figure out how to help this endangered species have babies.
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Sept. 20, 2012
Researchers are beginning to understand more about what makes the collection of street drugs known as "bath salts" so uniquely potent, long lasting and dangerous.