It has four chambers, blood vessels and it beats — sort of. In a first, scientists have 3D printed a heart using human tissue. Though the heart is much smaller than a human's (it's only the size of a rabbit's), and there's still a long way to go until it functions like a normal heart,... Continue Reading →

A few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, the hot, young soup of our universe cooled enough for the smallest building blocks of life to combine into atoms for the first time. One balmy, 6,700-degree-Fahrenheit day (3,700 degrees Celsius), a helium atom glommed onto a single proton — actually a positively charged hydrogen ion — and the... Continue Reading →

The Big Bang is commonly thought of as the start of it all: About 13.8 billion years ago, the observable universe went boom and expanded into being. But what were things like before the Big Bang? Short answer: We don't know. Long answer: It could have been a lot of things, each mind-bending in its own way.... Continue Reading →

Deep in the Gulf of California, scientists have discovered a fantastical expanse of hydrothermal vents, full of crystallized gases, glimmering pools of piping-hot fluids and rainbow-hued life-forms. Punctuating it all are towering structures made of minerals from the vents, looming as tall as 75 feet (23 meters). A decade ago, scientists visiting this spot saw... Continue Reading →

On 10 April 2019, the first ever direct image of a black hole and its vicinity was published, following observations made by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017 of the supermassive black hole in Messier 87's galactic centre. On Wednesday, astronomers announced that they’d captured the world’s first image of a black hole — and the internet... Continue Reading →