Charles Q. Choi

The moon's south pole is home to permanently shadowed craters, and now researchers are proposing that they could be home to incredibly stable lasers that could one day serve as a lunar time standard.

Rice is eaten by more than half of the world's population daily. Should everyone be washing it before it's cooked?

The approach helps reveal whether maternal genes contribute directly to autism in children or have indirect effects on the prenatal environment.

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It's after dark, and the lights go out; a thunderstorm has knocked out your power. At first, it's pitch-black.

Some Neanderthals living in northwestern Europe after 52,500 years ago were surprisingly diverse, suggesting that they didn't all go extinct due to inbreeding.

Some of the last surviving Neanderthals displayed greater genetic diversity than scientists previously thought, a new study of ancient DNA reveals, challenging the idea that genetic decline was the main cause of their extinction.

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New machine may solve optimization problems that are too hard for regular computers

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