For a ship on a mission of worldwide importance, the Yong Sheng is a distinctly unimpressive sight. The gray and green hull of the 19,000-ton cargo vessel, operated by China’s state-owned Cosco Group, is streaked with rust, while its cargo of steel and heavy ...

Nestled below the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory outside Pasadena has a surprisingly low-tech feel. For more than 40 years, space missions to the planets have been controlled from its operations rooms, yet the place is still striking for ...

The idea would make headlines around the world and bring tears of joy to the planet’s journalists. An adorable baby woolly mammoth, tottering on its newborn legs, is introduced to the media. Cloned from a few cells scraped from the permafrost of Siberia, the ...

For a site symbolizing a future that will either poison our countryside or bring us unlimited amounts of cheap, pollution-free energy, Elswick, in northeast England, is a distinctly underwhelming destination for a visit. The gas-power station, owned by the U.K. drilling company Cuadrilla, lies ...

In 1961, Oxford archaeologists uncovered a pit at the site of Gen. Gnaeus Julius Agricola’s headquarters at Inchtuthil, the site of a Roman legionary fortress, in Scotland. Unsavory Caledonians had made his troops’ position untenable. STUFF MATTERS: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials ...

Barbara Oliver has had an intriguing relationship with her identical twin sister, Christine, over the decades. Throughout their childhoods, they were effectively treated as two versions of the one person: they were dressed in exactly the same manner and were given the same hairstyles. ...

It is one of the most unusual evolutionary ideas ever proposed: humans are amphibious apes who lost their fur, started to walk upright and developed big brains because they took to living the good life by the water’s edge. This is the aquatic ape ...

In August 1930, the Norwegian ship Bratvaag, carrying a party of scientists and seal-hunters, moored off the tiny Arctic island of Kvitoya. Few humans had ever set foot there — it is extremely remote and usually surrounded by thick pack ice. A couple of ...

Across the world’s great deserts, a mysterious sheen has been found on boulders and rock faces. These layers of manganese, arsenic and silica are known as desert varnish and they are found in the Atacama desert in Chile, the Mojave desert in California, and ...

Scientists say they have seen the future of genetically modified foods and have concluded that it is orange or, more precisely, golden.

<< CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 And Wallace was impetuous. While Darwin fully understood the implications of his theory, holding back publication because he knew he would upset believers, including his wife, Wallace plunged in, happy to upset society. He didn’t give a damn, said ...