Wired Science

Don’t rely on just your hair conditioner to control head lice. The research is a bit complex.

Plans are afoot once again to build a canal through Nicaragua, providing a shortcut for container ships carrying goods too and from Asia and the east coast of North America. Like others before it, the plan is controversial — for …

Between 1986 and 1992 – that is, from the time Challenger was destroyed to the time NASA first launched its replacement, the Orbiter Endeavour – NASA’s Shuttle fleet numbered just three Orbiters. Perhaps not too surprisingly, the U.S. civilian space …

Recently, The Atlantic published a story explaining the role neuroscience plays in nuclear negotiations with Iran. Wired Science blogger Christian Jarrett is unconvinced there’s a link.

Indonesia’s Kelud volcano erupted unexpectedly a few weeks ago. Here are some before and after photos of the volcano, from Earth and space.

Gelada baboons use yawning as a form of communication.

The 2014 Winter Olympics are finished (in case you didn’t know).  The Olympics are filled with interesting physics problems.  If only I had more time, each of these could have been a nice blog post. Instead, it’s up to you …

It’s been more than a year since the first-ever clinical trial of fecal transplants demonstrated that the low-tech process works really well for people suffering from various forms of diarrhea. So why hasn’t the FDA approved it yet?

“Mars Rover Sample Return (MRSR) is widely perceived as too expensive.” Thus began the first of two February 1989 memoranda by Brian Wilcox, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) rover engineer. MRSR was a robotic mission jointly studied between 1983 and …

I’ve looked at the loop-the-loop problem before. The basic idea is to take something (like a car) and drive around a vertical loop while not leaving the track. It’s a cool stunt especially with a human. How does it work? …

New species are all around us. They just don’t have backbones. At Ohio State University, researchers found a really weird new type of mite living in the dirt on campus.

As a novel strain of avian influenza rapidly spreads through China, scientists consider the dangers posed by the country’s large animal farms and agricultural practices.

You probably thought Godzilla was godzilla-sized. Well, you’d be wrong. Godzilla is BIGGER THAN GODZILLA.

The Mars Rover Sample Return (MRSR) Science Working Group (SWG) convened its first meeting in April 1987. Chaired by Michael Carr of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, the group’s purpose was to advise engineers designing rovers and …

Hardly a day goes by that Aleppo isn’t in the news, and the news has usually been awful. As many as 500,000 people have fled in recent weeks as the Syrian government has bombed rebel-held parts of the city. It’s …

Even though 1,300 medals will be awarded by the time all is said and done at the 22nd edition of the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, one remarkable performance will go unrewarded: the snowmaking. 

There is a classic logic problem known as the Barber paradox (itself a variant of Russell’s paradox): in a town where the barber shaves every man who doesn’t shave himself, who shaves the barber? If he shaves himself, then there …

My new plan in introductory physics is to require students to demonstrate some ability to create a numerical calculation. Just to be clear, by “numerical calculation” – I mean to solve a problem by breaking that problem into many simpler …

Asian elephants console others who are in distress with vocalizations and gentle touches, according to a new report published in the journal PeerJ.

Want to know what ant just marched through your kitchen? This will help!