The Mother of All Nerds

Technician Emory Toomey installs a navigation camera on NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft in a cleanroom

NASA’s Dragonfly Just Simulated the Hardest Flight It Will Make on Titan

NASA’s Dragonfly has completed its most comprehensive simulated flight yet, rehearsing the autonomous decisions it will need to reach Titan’s surface safely.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory orbiting above Earth

NASA Ends Swift Observatory After Nearly 22 Years of Chasing Cosmic Explosions

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has ended its nearly 22-year mission, leaving behind a vast public archive and a rapid-response model that reshaped astronomy.

Nintendo Switch 2 console in handheld mode with blue and orange Joy-Con 2 controllers

Modern Warfare 4 Brings Call of Duty Back to Nintendo After 13 Years

Modern Warfare 4 launches on Switch 2, ending Call of Duty’s 13-year Nintendo absence and putting Microsoft’s day-and-date platform promise to its first real test.

Deborah Ann Woll speaking into a microphone at GalaxyCon Raleigh in 2024

The Cycle Gives Deborah Ann Woll a Horror Mystery Built to Hide Its Monster

The Cycle sends Deborah Ann Woll into a forensic cold case that turns into creature horror, testing whether its family mystery can survive the monster.

Brendan rides a horse through a sunlit forest as Prue stands beside her bicycle in Wildwood.

Wildwood’s Puppets Have Tiny Mechanical Bodies and a Hospital

A puppet hospital, spring-steel hands and animatable muscles: a look at the miniature engineering behind LAIKA’s Wildwood.

Four NASA leaders seated at the Artemis Acceleration briefing with a Moon graphic behind them

NASA’s 2028 Moon Landing Now Has Two Very Different Paths

NASA is keeping SpaceX and Blue Origin in contention for its first Artemis Moon landing. Their two flight plans could not be more different.

Catherine Breed wearing a wetsuit, swim cap and goggles aboard her support boat, with the ocean behind her.

She Swam Nearly 900 Miles. Sewage Kept Her Finish Offshore

Catherine Breed completed a nearly 900-mile staged swim down California on October 19. Sewage pollution near the border shaped her offshore finish.

Louis Daguerre’s view of Boulevard du Temple, with a standing customer and a smaller shoeshiner figure near the lower-left street corner.

Finding Where Two Strangers Stood in This 1838 Photo Took Two Years

Two tiny figures in Louis Daguerre’s famous 1838 photograph sent filmmakers on a two-year hunt through old maps and modern 3D scans. Paris now marks their spot.

Composite promo image of Bryce Harper in a Phillies uniform beside the masked Doctor Doom.

Doomsday’s Baseball Promo Had Viewers Asking What Was Actually in the Movie

Reed Richards takes the mound in Marvel’s World Series crossover, while real MLB stars leave some viewers wondering which bits belong in Doomsday.

A grizzly bear at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center walks past a fallen log, rocks and yellow flowers.

A Trash Can Was Designed to Keep Bears Out. Kobuk Figured Out the Latch.

A guarded lever was meant to keep bear paws out. Kobuk used his claws and a twist of his body to open it, revealing the ingenuity behind bear-resistant gear tests.

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Actor Joe Manganiello speaks onstage at a True Blood panel at Comic-Con International in 2010.

Ben Affleck’s Canceled Batman Movie Had Deathstroke Kill Gordon and Take Alfred Hostage, Joe Manganiello Says

Joe Manganiello’s memoir describes Ben Affleck’s unmade Batman film as a revenge thriller: Deathstroke would target Gordon, abduct Alfred and nearly kill Batman and Batgirl.

Rosalind Franklin looking through a microscope in a 1955 archival photograph.

Rosalind Franklin Saw DNA’s Helical Pattern in Photo 49—Then Made Photo 51 a Better-Framed Repeat

A new history-of-science study says Franklin had already calculated key features of DNA’s helical pattern from Photo 49. Photo 51 was her planned, clearer repeat—not a sudden clue she failed to understand.

Hubble image of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 1827, with a rusty dust lane crossing its bright disk

Hubble’s Edge-On View of NGC 1827 Turns a Pretty Galaxy Into a Cosmology Test

Hubble’s new edge-on portrait of NGC 1827 reveals dust lanes, young stars and a survey testing cosmology’s small-galaxy predictions.

Sunlit Falcon 9 exhaust forms a glowing jellyfish-shaped plume above silhouetted trees after the SpaceX CRS-35 launch

That Glowing “Space Jellyfish” Was a Falcon 9 Carrying the ISS’s Next Experiments

A Falcon 9’s sunlit exhaust made a giant predawn “jellyfish” while Dragon carried more than 6,300 pounds of science and hardware to the ISS.

Official ESA/Hubble artist’s concept of a possible gas giant orbiting a white dwarf, with a bright debris disk and escaping material; illustration, not an observed photograph.

Astronomers Think a Dead Star May Be Making a New Planet—Thanks to 1999 Hubble Data

A 25-year-old Hubble puzzle may point to a gas giant forming from the debris of a star’s death. The planet is still a candidate, but the clue is remarkable.

Four adult survivors stand at the edge of a snowy forest looking toward a distant town at dawn.

Yellowjackets’ Final Season Makes the Rescue Look Like the Beginning of the Nightmare

The new Yellowjackets final-season teaser turns the team’s rescue into the beginning of the cover-up that will haunt them for decades.

An original gothic heroine overlooks 1499 Paris as an impossible dark castle rises beyond the city.

Castlevania Returns to 2D After 13 Years—And the Genre It Helped Name Has Moved On

Castlevania returns to side-scrolling action after 13 years, but Belmont’s Curse must compete with a genre transformed by the series’ descendants.

Perseverance rover tracks crossing rocky, sloping Martian terrain on October 11, 2026.

Perseverance Has Driven Farther Than Any Vehicle on Another World

Perseverance passed Opportunity’s lifetime distance on Mars. Its self-driving system and repurposed helicopter hardware help explain how it keeps moving.

AI-generated conceptual illustration of a silver mechanical honeycomb bending into a wave on a white background.

Scientists Built a Robotic Material That Finds Its Own Beat

A honeycomb of robotic units settles into a shared rhythm in laboratory experiments. The new Nature paper explores a route to time-crystalline order.

Original editorial illustration of an escape artist and armored warrior couple facing two divided cosmic worlds.

Josh Hutcherson and Mackenzie Davis Will Lead DC’s Mister Miracle—And the Marriage Is the Point

Josh Hutcherson and Mackenzie Davis will voice Scott Free and Big Barda in DC’s eight-episode Mister Miracle series written by Tom King.