Charles Q. Choi

The event horizon is the threshold around the black hole where the escape velocity surpasses the speed of light. Here's what that means.

The probe's death death dive helped shed light on the mystery.

From a societal standpoint, you need a divine power watching you only if your neighbor isn't doing so.

A distant alien world that was potentially on its way into exile in interstellar space was rescued by the gravitational pull of a passing pair of stars, a new study argues.

Analyzing ripples in the fabric of space and time created by pairs of dead stars may soon solve a cosmic mystery surrounding how quickly the universe is expanding — if scientists are lucky.

The shape of your brain may say a lot about the Neanderthal in you.

In a nearly 5,000-year-old tomb in Sweden, researchers have discovered the oldest-known strain of the notorious bacterium Yersinia pestis.

Way more sex happened between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans across Europe and Asia than scientists originally thought, a new study finds.

The ancient Celts took boasting of their conquests to an extreme.

The little sea monster used its mouth full of scissor teeth to rip flesh from other fish.

An analysis of ancient silver coins suggests that the ordained woman may have actually lived.

Jesus' crucified body did not make the bloodstains seen on this holy cloth, scientists find.

The first mission designed to hunt a meteorite that crashed into the ocean has now discovered what may be tiny fragments of the meteorite's crust, researchers say.

A new study suggests also looking for "bioessential" elements when searching for alien life.

That's a setback for what is otherwise a highly nutritious bread.

A black hole could have 1 million planets orbiting near it that are potentially capable of supporting life as we know it, an astrophysicist suggests.

The odd shapes of the inner moons of Saturn, from ravioli to potatoes, may be due to mergers of tiny moonlets, a new study finds.

Physicists speculate that decaying neutrons may be producing particles unknown to science that make up the elusive dark matter.

Any alien civilizations born on "super-Earth" planets may be ground-bound by their home worlds' powerful gravity, a new study suggests.

This is a serious question, and serious scientists are speculating about what traces these potential predecessors might have left behind.

A vast "city of the dead" in Sudan revealed stones inscribed with the oldest language in southern Africa.

Earthworks that span a huge swath of the Amazon River basin reveal some parts of the region were once densely populated.

The corpses of these tiny creatures ooze out a slimy layer that may explain catastrophic undersea landslides and tsunamis.