Microscopic crystals that resemble party streamers, harlequins, and jacks challenge previous assumptions that fossilized curvy crystals indicate life.

An rare sun show gave cold-bitten Nebraskans a reason to go outside Wednesday.

A Chinese farmer, long ridiculed for building robots from spare parts, is making money and winning awards from his hobby. His latest: a mustachioed, rickshaw puller.

Pulsar energy, Saturn storms, and an out-of-this-world balloon are among the week's best space images.

Chemical signatures in 635-million-year-old rock suggest our planet once had an otherworldly atmosphere that might have helped melt millions of years' worth of deep freeze.

A piglet nuzzles a chicken as Ebola threatens, a Chinese mummy has a surprisingly good hair day, and more in the week's best news photos.

Like the wakes of cosmic speedboats, oddly shaped bow shocks reveal single stars careening through the cosmos at more than 112,000 miles (180,250 kilometers) an hour.

A layer of Earth's magnetosphere—the shield that protects Earth from solar winds—has recently come into focus.

Medical imaging tools used to peer inside living people have been adapted to create the first virtual fly-though of the remains of a dead star.

Scientists are studying bees' aggressive behavior and ocular and navigational skills in hopes of improving missile technology.

Among the surprises scientists have in store for the coming year: Sunken treasures, a new evolution debate, earlier Earths, and a host of revelations about the universe.

The first infrared panorama of the Milky Way's center has revealed a previously unknown population of massive stars scattered across the turbulent zone around our galaxy's core.

Asteroid debris around the remains of dead stars once like our sun show chemical signatures similar to the makeup of our solar system's terrestrial worlds, according to a new study.

The discovery of microscopic diamonds in 12,900-year-old soil supports the controversial idea that comet swarms caused a die-off of ice age mammals, a new study says.

A Texas-size asteroid may have sparked a U.S.-size landslide on ancient Mars, says a new study that hints at the origin of a mysterious red planet region.