Our genes strictly dictate our personalities, appearance and diseases. Or do they? Research has revealed that genes can turn on and off; they can be expressed for years and then silenced. Sometimes, they are never activated. And these genetic instructions—how and when DNA is read—can be determined by the experiences of one’s ancestors, even those several generations back.

#YourDailyEquation with Brian Greene offers brief and breezy discussions of the most pivotal equations of the ages. Even if your math is a bit rusty, these accessible and exciting stories …

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg spoke about science and history, drawing from his book “To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science.”

Evolutionary paleogeneticist Beth Shapiro travels to the cold reaches of the world to find DNA samples of long extinct animals, such as mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. She hopes to learn …

A universe that continually expands has long been the dominant cosmological framework. But a universe that undergoes cycles of expansion and contraction, perhaps for all time, has recently been analyzed …

Forget what you think you know about dark matter. After a 30-year search for a single, as yet unidentified, species of dark matter particle that would make up some 25% of the mass of the universe, physicists are starting to consider novel explanations.