To homeowners, fallen leaves look like work. To nature, they’re an investment, with tremendous value on the secondary market as invertebrate real estate.

Every match must be played on natural grass that gives players as consistent a surface as possible, no matter the venue. Cue the years of sod studies.

This year’s recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement talks about “punk science,” microbial economics and thinking like a mycorrhizal fungus. On Tuesday, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, sometimes described as the…

By most metrics, 2025 has been the worst year for the American scientific enterprise in modern history. Since January, the Trump administration has made deep cuts to the nation’s science funding, including more than $1 billion in grants to the…

More than 2,000 lighthouses large and small watch over Norway’s fractal, rocky coast. Some have stood for centuries, guiding mariners through treacherous seas and safely to port. Now they all must be updated to meet modern international standards. A…

Science seldom works in straight lines. Sometimes it’s “applied” to solve specific problems: Let’s put people on the moon; we need a Covid vaccine. Much of the time it’s “basic,” aimed at understanding, say, cell division or the physics of cloud…

One chart explains why slowing the spread of the infection is nearly as important as stopping it.

We explain the administration’s cuts to research.

A manuscript discovered in the Judean desert contains trial notes on an intricate tax-evasion scheme that involved forgery, fiscal fraud and the false sale of slaves.

Max Park is a longtime speedcubing world record holder — for the 3x3x3 cube, his best official time is 3.13 seconds. Let's show you how he does it.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Washington for Stand Up for Science, a rally in response to President Trump’s federal-funding and job cuts. “I never thought of myself as an activist — that’s never been part of my identity,” said Colette…

Underground fungal networks are “living algorithms” that quietly help regulate Earth’s climate. Now scientists know what makes them so efficient. By Alan Burdick Alan Burdick is an editor and occasional reporter of health and science news. March 1,…

Patients often are in the dark about which organs remain and which were removed — particularly the ovaries, which profoundly influence lifelong health.

Newsletter The Morning What this year’s Nobels can teach us about science and humanity. Oct. 13, 2024, 7:10 a.m. ET By Alan Burdick and Katrina Miller We are journalists on The Times’s Science desk. Technology observers have grown increasingly vocal…

The moment has arrived. After years underground, periodical cicadas — insects of the genus Magicicada — are emerging by the trillions across more than a dozen states to molt, sing, court and mate. A casual human listener could mistake their…

Neanderthals were even better craftsmen than thought, a new analysis of 300,000-year-old wooden tools has revealed.

Feral cats take a heavy toll on the world’s wildlife, especially Down Under. The solution? Smarter traps, sharpshooters, survival camp for prey species, and the “Felixer.”

The full force of the moon’s shadow crossed the United States, Mexico and Canada on Monday, as the first total solar eclipse in seven years plunged the day into darkness and reminded all in its path of our planet’s place in the cosmos. For more than…

The superbly preserved remains of a Bronze Age settlement offer a glimpse of a “colorful, rich, varied” domestic life circa 850 B.C.

An 11th-century astrolabe, a complex instrument for precisely mapping the heavens, recently turned up in an Italian museum.