Charles Q. Choi

If humans had green skin, for instance, what if it granted us the ability to perform photosynthesis, which plants use to live off of sunlight?

Earth is the only planet traveling within its nearly circular orbit around the sun. But what if Earth shared its orbit with another planet?

What might the world be like if everyone on Earth had albinism, from prehistoric times until now?

A viable nuclear fusion reactor — one that spits out more energy than it consumes — could be here as soon as 2025.

Remnants of water once found on the surface of Mars may be hidden in a handful of small lakes below the Red Planet's south pole, and more could exist, according to new research.

Unusual flashes of gamma rays could reveal that what appear to be giant black holes are actually huge wormholes, a new study finds.

What might Earth be like crowned with rings? Space and science- fiction illustrator Ron Miller created extraordinary images of how the sky might look if Earth possessed such rings.

Will the majestic redwoods of California's coast survive the lightning-sparked fires raging across the state?

Astronomers might detect black holes falling into wormholes via ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, a new study finds.

Scientists have generated an exotic form of matter in the unique microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station and are using it to explore the quantum world, a new study finds.

An exoplanet may be shaped like an American football due to the mighty gravitational forces it experiences close to its star, a new study finds.

The way the fabric of space and time swirls in a cosmic whirlpool around a dead star has confirmed yet another prediction from Einstein's theory of general relativity, a new study finds.

Researchers have discovered humanity's oldest cave art. The paintings depict a hunting scene with what may be part-animal, part-human figures.

This weird locomotion has never been seen until now.

But collectively, genes do play a role in sexual orientation.

Previous research had suggested that high-altitude regions such as Tibet and the Andes were among the last places peopled by humans.

Hieroglyphic inscription may overturn view of the Maya.

Astronomers have shown that Einstein's ideas about the warping of space and time holds true as the best description yet of how gravity works.

From the 800s to the 1400s, about a dozen megadroughts struck the American Southwest, and all lasted longer than a decade.

Dead cells in the body don't sound very useful, but they might provide a new way to fight cancer, a new study in animals suggests.

Just a slight dip in the fertility rates of Neanderthals could explain their extinction over the course of several thousand years.

As if preparing for battle, some shrimplike creatures suit up in aluminum armor to survive the ravages of the deepest part of the oceans, a new study finds.

Mysterious "ghost apes" may have interbred with the great apes known as bonobos just as modern humans repeatedly had sex with now-extinct human lineages.

The 3-foot-wide rock rock visited us three years before 'Oumuamua.

An entirely new lineage of the mysterious human relatives called Denisovans has been discovered.