In southern New Mexico lies the Tularosa Basin, an oblong bowl that’s home to a natural sandbox: White Sands National Park. In 2005, David Bustos came to White Sands to work as a National Park Service ...

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, snowboarding made its debut as an Olympic sport. No longer relegated to the fringes, snowboarders took to the snow-capped peaks of Mount Yakebitai, and 26 ...

Chris Mazurek was a freshman in college when he had a dream that he was inside the Legends of Zelda video game. He saw himself as the main protagonist, Link, in third person. Suddenly, beeping noises ...

Imagine a website that reviewed narcotics. Imagine that people who were really into methamphetamine or heroin could go to one of dozens of sites to weigh the pros and cons of each drug. Imagine these ...

If a theory doesn’t make a testable prediction, it isn’t science. It’s a basic axiom of the scientific method, dubbed “falsifiability” by the 20th century philosopher of science Karl Popper. General ...

For more than three centuries, a plague of unshakable lethargy blanketed the American South. It began with “ground itch,” a prickly tingling in the tender webs between the toes, which was soon ...

(This program is no longer streaming). Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs in a fiery global catastrophe. But we know little about how their successors, the mammals, ...

There’s truly nothing like a pretty sunset. As the sun sets, the heavens above are like cotton candy: lighting up with a beautiful display of deep reds, vibrant oranges, and intense pinks. Simply put, ...

Fifteen years ago or so, when Helen Sang , a geneticist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, and her colleagues wanted to get a gene into a chicken, the process was anything but fast. They would ...

Kaden Bowen is a smiley 12-year-old who loves music and riding in fast cars. He also can’t walk or talk, is legally blind, and can only use the pinky finger on his left hand. Kaden has cerebral palsy, ...

Once you’ve seen a slime mold—its gooey, delicately branching structure oozing in a vaguely unsettling way along a log or leaf—you’re unlikely to forget it. They’re unmistakable because there’s ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. The engineer whips out a protractor and straightedge. That’s ...