Get the Popular Science daily newsletter
Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week.
By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge…

The Cambrian explosion was one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of evolution.
Around 540 million years ago, a sudden, astonishing burst of diversification effectively marked the beginning of most animal life on our planet.
The fossil record rapidly became much richer, revealing

Steven Spielberg’s new film Disclosure Day imagines the moment 8 billion humans find out that we are not alone in the universe.
The movie, which opens in US theaters on June 12, is a fictional account of the government cover-up and subsequent “disclosure” of evidence that aliens have…

When you’re prospecting for gold, sometimes you can find treasure of a different kind.
That’s what happened in the desert of Western Australia, where geologists looking for deposits of the precious metal found something far rarer.
What started with a routine survey took a strange turn when…

The highest-resolution map yet of the underlying geology beneath Earth’s Southern Hemisphere revealed something we had never known before: an ancient ocean floor that may wrap around the core.
This thin yet dense layer lies at a depth of about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the surface,…

An oceanic expedition has turned up 31 new species from a vast, dimly lit habitat between the sunlit surface and the deep ocean.
The international team of scientists aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Falkor (too) research vessel also achieved another seagoing milestone – imaging the…

The wait is finally over: El Niño has officially begun.
On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that the semiannual climate phenomenon has arrived. Congratulations if you took the pre-July 1 prediction on Kalshi.
Prediction markets aren’t the only places with a…

SpaceX has devised a way to outfit its AI1 satellite with…

The ground beneath your feet is not quiescent.
It zings and pulses with frenzied activity, much of it driven by a partnership between plants and fungi that dates back at least 450 million years.
This is the mycorrhizal network – a vast system of fungal filaments locked in a mutual exchange…