Charles Q. Choi

Ever take a sip of a flat soda? Here's the chemistry behind it.

Soda's effervescence comes from processes that super-saturate the liquid with carbon dioxide, which later escapes from the soft drink as tiny, effervescent bubbles.

If the surface of your skin gets too chilly, the brain sets into motion a series of warming tricks such as shivering.

Scientists recently discovered rare brine pools — dense, salty depressions — at the bottom of the Red Sea, where microbes thrive under extreme conditions.

A new "4D" medical device has saved the lives of three baby boys with life-threatening breathing problems, researchers say.

Even if the mini monsters were created, they'd be destroyed before gobbling anything up.

Fossils found at the Sterkfontein Caves in South Africa may be much older than previously thought.

Both of Earth's poles are cold, but which has more ice and wins the prize for "coldest" pole?

Scientists may have untangled the mystery as to why parrots have such long lifespans.

The first people who migrated to the Americas from Asia may have had to take a circuitous coastal route, as direct passage overland may have been blocked by a massive wall of ice.

A new analysis of a 1.5 million-year-old human vertebra found in Israel suggests that ancient human relatives dispersed out of Africa in multiple waves.

The Joint European Torus fusion experiment in the U.K. has set a new record for generating energy.

Astronomers may have for the first time detected and measured the mass of an isolated stellar-mass black hole, a new study finds.

Organic molecules in a Mars meteorite that crash-landed on Earth are not signs of life, but instead formed in chemical reactions between water and rock.

Ancient footprints reveal a mysterious relative of humans may have lived at the same time and in the same area as the famous human ancestor "Lucy" in Tanzania.

Homo bodoensis is named after a 600,000-year-old skull found in Bodo D'ar, Ethiopia, in 1976.

The largest-ever study of Arab genomes has revealed the most ancient of all modern Middle Eastern populations and is shedding light on how modern humans may have first expanded across the globe.

Charred seeds found in the Utah desert represent the earliest-known human use of tobacco, nearly 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers said.

Fossilized human footprints found in New Mexico reveal that people dwelled in the Americas during the last ice age's peak — conclusive proof of early migration to the New World.

Astronomers may have captured the best view yet of matter colliding with the surface of a young star, findings that may shed light on what the sun looked like in its youth.

Astronomers have uncovered evidence of explosions triggered by dead stars ramming into live stars, possible proof of a new type of supernova, a new study finds.

A fizzled example of a gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion known in the universe, suggests these outbursts can be surprisingly brief, researchers say.

Bright reflections that radar detected beneath the south pole of Mars may not be underground lakes as previously thought but deposits of clay instead, a new study finds.