Science News

Twenty years of research convinced Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Jon Franklin that people wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for our four-legged panting friends. Some doubt his conclusions, likening him to a dyslexic churchgoer. But others support his findings.

Scientists successfully send a robot up a cable in the sky via laser power, watching it climb nearly 3,000 feet in four minutes. The experiment was part of a NASA contest in the Mojave Desert that ultimately seeks to create a space elevator.

The small earthquakes that periodically rattle the central U.S. may be aftershocks from a giant seismic event that hit the region two centuries ago, says a new study. The New Madrid Earthquakes, which convulsed the area for nearly three months starting in December 1811, were powerful enough to make the Mississippi River run backward.

The idea of a space elevator -- once popularized by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke -- might be moving one step closer to reality as three teams test out the concept in a NASA-funded contest out in the Mojave Desert.