Natalie Wolchover

Having a bagel-shaped swelling on one's forward is the latest body modification trend in Japan. It's nuts, but is it dangerous too?

Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, and other British media are influencing American English.

Despite 250 years of scientific investigation, lightning still confounds scientists' understanding of basic physics.

There's a lot of talk about securing the U.S. border with Mexico, but as it turns out, most state and county borders remain ambiguous. This causes frequent disputes.

Primatologists have discovered that chimps can recognize each other's rear ends in photos. What's the takeaway message here?

Spotted hyenas are much smarter than their stereotype suggests, and it's helping them adapt to a rapidly changing world.

The Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony awards scientists for a range of hilarious contributions this year, from a discovery of brain activity in dead salmon to the cure for exploding colons.

Antarctic sea ice hasn't been affected nearly as much as Artic ice by global warming. Skeptics say this disproves global warming, but scientists know better.

Globalization is leading to more and more mixing of genes, and evolutionary biologists say the entire human population will someday resemble Brazilians.

Globalization is leading to more and more mixing of genes, and evolutionary biologists say the entire human population will someday resemble Brazilians.

Physicists argue that science will eventually explain absolutely everything about the universe, even how it started.

Go ahead: drench your taco in hot sauce.

President Ahmadinejad accuses the West of causing drought in the country. Scientists say this is impossible.

Scientists explain a notorious optical illusion that confuses the brain into thinking circles are spirals.

A Japanese mathematician says he has the proof of the ABC conjecture, one of the most important unsolved problems in all of mathematics.

For the past half-century, computers have become twice as powerful every two years. If this trend continues, what will the future hold? Will computers eventually outsmart humans?

A new study found that organic food is no healthier than conventionally grown food. But are other reasons to shell out cash for organic groceries?

On the decks of the Curiosity rover, some of the most advanced equipment ever developed by humans is being held together by some of the oldest forms of human technology: intricate knots.

In several recent cases, people have been charged with swallowing diamonds in jewelry stores and replacing them with fakes. What happens when you swallow a diamond?

The world's hottest chili pepper packs the heat of 400 jalapeños. But what does that actually feel like in your mouth?

Almost everybody engages in cloud computing, but few people understand what the cloud actually is.

The so-called Baltic Sea "mystery object" is, in all likelihood, a mundane glacial deposit, according to the scientist who studied samples from the object.

A trio of photons emitted seven billion years ago from a gamma ray burst threaten to scrap decades of research by theoretical physicists.