Science

The FTC is playing whack-a-mole with pseudoscience again, and this time it’s targeting homeopathy. Their latest comments contend (PDF) that the standard disclaimer isn’t enough to dissuade consumers from buying this crap, so now not only do homeopathic products have to carry the standard disclaimer, they also have to say …

Remember the commercial? This is your brain on drugs. One could hardly forget the stark image, the idea that using drugs literally fries your brain. And it’s true that the brain changes in response to drug use. How it changes depends on the substance, dose, frequency and duration, as well …

Research that turns beloved sci-fi into science fact is probably my favorite thing, right up there with research published with no paywall. I’ve talked before about how easy it would be to make a tricorder, along with some other Star Trek tech. Lo and behold, the X Prize Foundation has …

San Francisco’s Millennium Tower is the tallest building in the city at 58-stories, filled with luxury condos inhabited by some very annoyed people. The building has gained a reputation as the “leaning tower of San Francisco” since is was revealed earlier this year that it’s started sinking and tilting. The …

Official word has come from the ESA regarding the why and wherefore of Schiaparelli’s crash landing on the Martian surface. Mission scientists were able to recover data from the lander before its untimely demise, and that data has revealed much more about the sequence of events during Schiaparelli’s last moments. …

That’s no moon: It’s a gaping hole in the Empire’s budget. The Death Star, as depicted in the first Star Wars film from 1977, was a terrifying super weapon that could destroy an entire planet, but the bills for keeping it running may have been terrifying too. British energy supplier …

The Hubble Space Telescope has been silently hovering above Earth for over 25 years, but it’s still returning spectacular images of the cosmos. That’s an amazing technological achievement. But it wasn’t always a smooth ride. By now, the story is well known: Despite a Herculean effort to test Hubble before launch, an imperfection …

Virgin Galactic seemed to be on the fast track to making space tourism a reality. Unfortunately, that was before the tragic 2014 loss of the SpaceShipTwo (VSS Enterprise) test vessel. The accident resulted in the death of one of the ship’s two crew and set back Virgin Galactic’s plans dramatically. …

Humans have gotten rather good at launching things into orbit, but we don’t always bother to bring them back down when we’re done with them. This has led to a problem with accumulating space junk, which can be serious hazards for future space missions. Japan has launched the Kounotori 6 …

There’s a common misconception that genes determine our physiologic destiny. And it’s well and good to go around exploding such untruths — except when they turn out to be true. For a minority of people, those with inherited Mendelian disorders like cystic fibrosis, genes do in fact seem to determine …