Science & Technology

Catastrophic accidents at power plants have heightened fears about the safety of nuclear energy, but environmentalists and others are giving it renewed attention as a way to fight global warming.

Think you can beat the experts in spotting misinformation? Watch this short video and find out.

Online photos can be deceiving. Do you know how to identify the source? This skills-based video can help by teaching you how to use a reverse image search.

After the Soviet Union sent the first human safely into orbit, the U.S. government doubled down on its effort to win the race to the moon.

Today’s heated political arguments over censorship and misinformation online are rooted in a 26-word snippet of a law that created the Internet as we know it.

Like cigarette manufacturers decades ago, e-cigarette makers have pitched their products as fun and safe. But nobody knows what the risks are.

Sexual harassment. Discrimination. Workplace inequity. Google’s employees demonstrated against unfair practices. But has anything changed?

Normalization of deviance, the process of becoming inured to risky actions, is a useful concept that was developed to explain how the Challenger disaster happened.

Is geo-engineering the climate an answer to global warming? Cold War science has some lessons.

Humans are wary that robots could replace them. So what can we learn from the legendary chess match between a supercomputer and Garry Kasparov?

Our social media addiction is explained by theories pioneered by B.F. Skinner decades ago.

Autonomous vehicle technology has gotten better, but how close are we really to a time when a robot chauffeur will be able to safely drive us?

Our moon has winked from the heavens as a symbol and anchor, reminding us not only the cycle of life, but also of danger and death. Scientists have brought the moon into sharper focus, and astronauts have left the first footprints there. But will we ever be able to explain its lasting, mesmerizing power of attraction?

An international treaty laid out the basics of space law in 1967. But without a lot of case history to go on, lawyers today have looked to maritime law and Arctic exploration as they lay the groundwork for how space will be governed.

President Donald Trump has long been a critic of childhood vaccines – but then he suddenly changed course, urging parents to vaccinate their children.

Online learning is indeed disrupting college as we know it – but not in the way you might think.

The increasing scarcity of drinking water is beginning to capture the world’s attention – but surprisingly, an innovative solution might just be found in one of the Earth’s driest places.

As gaming becomes the dominant form of entertainment this century, game developers increasingly track player behavior to tailor experiences that will keep people playing longer and spending more money.

With every new advance in prenatal genetic screening, the ability to prevent suffering has also sparked difficult questions about what should count as “a disease” versus “a difference,” and whether we’re in danger of wiping out certain segments of the population. This story was produced in collaboration with PBS, American Experience.

NASA isn’t the first organization to experiment with living on Mars – in 1991 eight people sealed themselves inside a giant glass biosphere to practice space living. By the time they emerged two years later, they had “suffocated, starved and went mad.”

The Y2K bug threatened to wipe out computers and disrupt modern society at the end of the 20th century. We all remember the doomsday hype, but what really happened?

Genetic technology is advancing, and critics are warning of a slippery slope. We speak with the scientists working at the forefront of the research, families who have benefited and the first-ever “test-tube” baby to understand the debate.

On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown became the first ever so-called “test-tube baby.” Her birth was one of the biggest media stories of the 20th century, and she became famous just by being born.

Overdose deaths are skyrocketing, forcing researchers to find new ways to think about and treat addiction.

Today, companies market genetic tests for everything from cancer to diet and exercise. But how much can tests like 23andme really predict?

For the past 20 years, scientists have been trying to cure disease by altering DNA. We examine how with CRISPR Cas-9 gene editing and the revival of gene therapy, they’re closer than ever.

One of biology’s most spectacular achievements – the race to sequence the human genome – was billed as a way to end disease. Here’s where it led.

A tragic bridge collapse in Miami echoes a similar event in Minnesota over a decade ago, one of the first signs of America’s growing infrastructure problem.

A skepticism of science has seeped into the classroom, and it’s revived attacks on one of the most established principles of biology – evolution.

A remote Oregon mountainside offers a window into the workplace of the future.

Future of Money, the first in a 5-part series, looks at what ancient stones on a tiny Pacific island can teach us about Bitcoin, blockchains and the future of money.

Guatemalan homesteaders and a Michigan contractor are riding a wave that could change how our lives are wired.

Online manipulation and immersive media have begun to eradicate our shared notion of authenticity and trust. How will society change when we can no longer believe what we see, hear, or think?

A small South Dakota farm holds lessons for feeding a crowded and less predictable world.

We’ve teamed with PBS’ American Experience to take a look back at Freeman Dyson, who explored whether interplanetary space travel could be made possible by harnessing the power of a nuclear bomb.

Wireless power seems cutting edge, but it was actually pioneered more than 100 years ago by Nikola Tesla. We’ve teamed up with the American Experience to explore how Tesla’s technology is being used today.

The early science of hallucinogens in the 1950s and ’60s was “kind of a Wild West free-for-all.” For more info on the science of spiders and drugs, visit www.drpeterwitt.com.

The robotics team from M.I.T recovers from disaster at the robot Olympics.

For decades the United States has been on a quest to perfect stealth technology, but development of the F-35 fighter jet shows just how complicated dreams can become.

More than 40 years ago, Pierre Sprey set out to build the ultimate fighter jet.

Thirty-five years after the first dietary guidelines, how much do we really know about the science behind a healthy diet?

Is there a hidden cause of obesity? A professor at Stanford thinks the answer might lie with the 100 trillion microbes living in our bodies.

Does exercise really make you lose weight? One scientist went to Africa and found an unexpected answer.

There are over 80,000 chemicals in use today. The story of TRIS, removed from children’s pajamas in the 1970s, illustrates just how hard it is to regulate chemicals, or to even know if they’re safe.

News media coverage in the 1980s and early 1990s fueled fears of a national cancer epidemic caused by power lines and generated a debate that still lingers today.

How did cars become “computers on wheels,” so automated that some are about to start driving themselves? The story begins forty-five years ago with a quest to make cars safer and the battle over the air bag.

Before DNA testing, prosecutors relied on less sophisticated forensic techniques, including microscopic hair analysis, to put criminals behind bars. But how reliable was hair analysis?

In 2003, a blackout crippled areas of the U.S. and Canada, leaving some 50 million people in the dark. Years later, we are still grappling with concerns over the vulnerability of our power grid.

In 1997, Scottish scientists announced they had cloned a sheep and named her Dolly, and sent waves of future shock around the world that continue to shape frontiers of science today.

In the 1990s, a bunch of gene jockeys brought the first genetically engineered food to market. The business crashed but biotech science has flourished far beyond the produce aisle.