An oil spill off the U.S. coast 20 years ago still threatens marine life.

Peanut allergies are among the most common and most dangerous food allergies. A tiny exposure to peanuts can mean big trouble for a person with a peanut allergy, with symptoms ranging from sneezing or coughing to the constriction, or narrowing, of airways. Some people die from the exposure. But a tiny exposure may help scientists find a cure. A recent study suggests that some children may be able to beat back their allergic reactions to peanuts by gradually introducing trace amounts of the nut into their diets. It’s too early to say for certain, so if you have a peanut allergy, do not try ...

As long as people have been living on Earth, we’ve been looking up at bright stars in the night sky, trying to understand the universe and our place in it. Astronomers have long known that not all stars are alike. Some are almost as old as the universe itself, others are just now being born. They come in different colors: blue, white, yellow and red. Some shine brightly in the sky, and others are visible only with special telescopes. Some stars race through space in pairs or groups; others move alone. Some, like our own 4.8-billion year-old sun, are surrounded by planets.    One o...

The last dinosaurs died about 65 million years ago, long before humans started walking around. Scientists can still learn new things about these ancient animals though, thanks to the fossils they left behind. Paleontologists are scientists who study dinosaurs, and recently these researchers have made some surprising discoveries.   Canadian scientists announced they had identified the smallest meat-eating dinosaur in North America. The fossilized remains of the tiny dino had been found originally in 1982 but were recently rediscovered in a museum drawer. The remains were unearthed nea...

Anyone who has ever gone fishing probably knows this general rule: Keep the big ones, throw the smaller ones back. The idea behind the rule is simple — the larger fish are assumed to be older. If you were to keep the smaller ones, they would not be able to reproduce, and the fish population would be in jeopardy. That rule may have done as much harm as good. Fishing out the largest fish from a population can have an unwanted consequence: Over time, fewer adult fish get really big. If only the smaller fish can reproduce, then future generations of the fish will tend to be smaller. This is an...

To see Albus Dumbledore’s memories, Harry Potter simply had to look into the pensieve, sit back and wait for the show to begin. For us Muggles, reading minds isn’t quite so simple. It may not be simple, but it may not be impossible, either. What if a brain scan could reveal your memories? A team of British scientists recently did just that — they used brain scans to look at spatial memory in four people. Spatial memory is the kind of memory you use to remember where you are. Rats, for example, use spatial memory to get through a maze. You use spatial memory to remember how to get from ...

If you gaze through a telescope at a distant galaxy, it may glow brightly with the light of hundreds of millions of stars. Despite all that light, most scientists think that at the center of a big galaxy lies something very dark: a black hole. A black hole is a region of space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. What’s even stronger than a black hole at the center of a galaxy? Try two black holes, spinning around each other like deep-space dancers. Astronomers recently announced they have observed a faraway galaxy that may have at its center two black holes, v...

The taste of metal is sweet, spicy, bitter, delicious and perhaps other, mystery tastes.

Crazy-colored, flat-faced fish does more than swim.

An aquatic animal provides a possible new kind of disease resistance.

An orbiting telescope records the universe’s most powerful explosions.

The absorbent stuff in diapers may help clean up after a terrorist attack.

Scientists report on the true cost of eating meat — it’s more greenhouse gases.

An invisible particle sheds light on the mysterious interior of the Earth.