What are scientists looking for when searching for alien life? A lot, it turns out: the search for extraterrestrials requires the help from astronomers, planetary scientists, chemists, computer scientists, and geneticists, just to name a few. But are we barking up the wrong carbon-based tree?

Temperature and pressure. Two sensations of vital importance in one’s daily life. Yet science has been lacking a deeper understanding of how these sensations are detected and encoded on a …

How far would you go to improve your focus, memory, or even learning ability? Would you be willing to strap on headgear that delivers electrical shocks to targeted areas of your brain? You may soon have that option.

Brian Greene and Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek discuss quantum mechanics, dark matter, cosmology, consciousness, and Wilczek’s new book, “Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.” This program is part of the Big …

Powerful new genetic tools allow scientists to alter the DNA of any organism—with tests on human embryos already underway. Even more ambitious, synthetic biologists on the verge of creating the genetic material for a living organism from scratch are setting their long-term sites on fashioning a fully synthetic human genome.

Come venture deep inside the world’s biggest physics machine, the Large Hadron Collider. This extraordinary feat of human engineering took 16 years and $10 billion to build, and just weeks ago began colliding particles at energies unseen since a fraction of a second after the big bang.