In a thought experiment first proposed in the 1920s, the Hilbert’s Hotel has an infinite number of rooms and helps demonstrate some of the strange properties of infinity.

The February storm left dozens of Texans dead and millions without power—and exposed an aging energy grid unprepared for a changing climate. Can we build something better? Ice and snow cover plants in ...

One of the world’s greatest ancient enigmas, the Nazca lines are a dense network of criss-crossing lines, geometric shapes, and animal figures etched across 200 square miles of Peruvian desert. Who ...

When the subject of alien abductions was first suggested as a possible NOVA, I was intrigued. As a long-time sci-fi buff and one open-minded to the notion of extraterrestrial intelligence, I could not ...

About 40,000 years ago, near the dawn of the 30-millennia-long period known as the Upper Paleolithic, the first anatomically modern humans suddenly and mysteriously revolutionized their cultures with ...

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Few attributes of being human have attracted more intense thought than the simple fact that, unlike all other living mammals, we walk upright on two legs. Human bipedalism represents a major ...

When I was born, the doctors couldn't tell my parents what I was: They couldn't tell if I was a boy or a girl. Between my legs they found "a rudimentary phallus" and "fused labio-scrotal folds." They ...

In this four-part special, technology columnist and best-selling author David Pogue takes a wild ride through the cutting-edge science that is powering a next wave of technological innovation. Pogue ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. This astonishing fact comes by way of Christopher Landsea, a ...

Imagine a place where more than 280 people have defied Earth's gravity, risking their lives to do science 250 miles above us. Here, on the International Space Station, unexpected challenges are a ...

Around 250 B.C., the Greek mathematician Archimedes calculated the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. A precise determination of pi, as we know this ratio today, had long been of ...