Nell Greenfieldboyce

A historic telescope collapsed in Puerto Rico. The enormous Arecibo telescope made scientific discoveries and has been featured in movies. Its collapse is an emotional blow for many Puerto Ricans.

The African crested rat's fuzzy fur has hairs loaded with a poison that can purportedly fell an elephant. But these rats turn out to be social, affectionate creatures.

Scientists have used a NASA probe way out in space, beyond Pluto, to measure visible light that's not connected to any known source such as stars or galaxies.

A NASA spacecraft sent out to collect rocks from an asteroid seems to have nabbed a lot of material, but there's now an unexpected problem — a flap isn't closing because some rocks are stuck.

NASA has collected and is returning its first sample from an asteroid. The rocks and dust could help us understand potentially dangerous space rocks and the history of the solar system.

A Twinkie stored in a basement for eight years has been transformed by fungi, giving scientists something unusual to ponder and probe.

Mountains on Pluto look strikingly similar to white-capped peaks on Earth, but these cold, alien mountains got whitened in a completely different way.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for research into "rewriting the code of life." Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the U.S. are the laureates.

The sun can affect people's electronics, the power grid and communications and navigation systems. But scientists predict that for the next decade or so, the sun's activity will not be too disruptive.

Scientists have found a gas associated with living organisms in a region of Venus' atmosphere. They can't figure out how it got there if it didn't come from life.

None of us is perfect, and sometimes the Hubble Space Telescope just flat-out points to the wrong spot in the sky. This has been happening more than ever in the last couple of years.

There's a lot that scientists don't know about how viral infections can interact. But researchers are eager to figure out how coronavirus infections might affect flu infections and vice versa.

Scientists have long debated whether the Earth's water was here when the planet formed or whether it arrived later. A study suggests much of the water originated in rocks from which Earth is built.

Some unusual meteorites suggest that Earth got its water at its start, rather than forming dry and being watered by comets later on.

So far this year, flu infections are way down in the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists want to know why — and what it means for the Northern Hemisphere as their flu season looms.

Scientists say influenza has almost disappeared in the Southern Hemisphere due to COVID-19 precautions, suggesting the Northern Hemisphere may avoid the double whammy of the coronavirus and flu.

When a weather station in Death Valley recorded a high of 130 degrees Sunday, it triggered an inquiry to verify the reading. Here's a look into the exacting process of vetting extreme weather claims.

The temperature in Death Valley, Calif., reached 130 degrees over the weekend. It could be a world record for the highest temperature, but first scientists must verify it.

Hair is soft compared with steel, but shaving can dull a razor surprisingly quickly. A new study examines exactly how a strand of hair can chip and crack a sharp blade.

NASA and SpaceX are welcoming home two astronauts who splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico after several months on the International Space Station.