One of history’s dark jokes is that the Roman Empire, for all its vaunted accomplishments, only made a single great ...

An attosecond—or 0.000000000000000001 second—is no time at all for a person. That is not so for electrons, atoms and ...

A hydrologist explains why Texas Hill Country is known as Flash Flood Alley and how its geography and geology can lead to ...

Flash floods happen when heavy rains unleash more water than the ground can absorb, causing that water to pile up and flow to ...

Conscientiousness appears to be about 40 to 50 percent heritable, so conscientious parents tend to raise conscientious kids.

To celebrate Scientific American ’s 180th anniversary, we’re publishing a jigsaw every weekday to show off some of our most ...

Hatim Sharif is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Karolina Rudnicka is a linguist at the University of Gdańsk in Poland. She researches language variation and change, ...

Dominik Stecuła is an assistant professor of Communication and Political Science at The Ohio State University. His research ...

Brain differences in children and teens who experiment with drugs early show up before they take their first puff or sip ...

Chemical fingerprints from volcanic rock offer hints of what’s happening in the mantle below the area where three rift zones ...

The National Weather Service issued timely alerts, meteorologists say, but few were listening in the hours before the ...