Microscopic Scale

The venomous centipede crawled into the Movile Cave millions of years ago and adapted to live in the pitch black, surrounded by deadly gases.

Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.

Clay dust can help zooplankton grab onto more of the potent greenhouse gas.

Scientists might be looking for Martian life in the wrong place.

It is physically impossible for a human to fully submerge in quicksand.

The particles are everywhere, and they may harm human health.

From safeguarding our food supply to preventing hospital infections, the battle against antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a growing challenge. Some bacteria can form biofilms, thick aggregates of millions of individual cells surrounded by protective mucus-like substances that easily adhere to surfaces. Forming such biofilms is a critical bacterial strategy to resist treatment.

Britain's seas are rich in wildlife, but many of its species can only be seen with a microscope. These are the plankton—tiny algae and animals found throughout the ocean that are the foundation of the entire marine food web.

Landing on Mars and establishing a colony on the Red Planet may expose humans to an array of space radiation that is little understood.

A confined microscopic bead could help us understand how our bodies harness energy.

Gold particles of the size of billionths of a meter are lethal to cancer cells. This fact has been known for a long time, as has a simple correlation: The smaller the nanoparticles used to fight the cancer cells, the faster they die. However, a more interesting, more complex picture of these interactions is emerging from the latest research, conducted at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of…

Blood, lymph fluid and other biological liquids can have surprising and sometimes troubling properties. Many of these biological solutions are non-Newtonian fluids, a type of liquid that is characterized by a non-linear relationship between stress and strain. Consequently, non-Newtonian fluids don't necessarily behave as one would expect from a liquid. For example, some of these peculiar fluids deform when touched…

The new study has scientists concerned that microplastics may be contributing to reproductive health issues.

Electron spin states can now be probed at much higher resolution and more efficiently, opening new opportunities in materials analysis and data processing technologies.

In an approach they call "nanostitching," MIT engineers used carbon nanotubes to prevent cracking in multilayered composites. The advance could lead to next-generation airplanes and spacecraft.

This wild, disputed idea about the cosmos says it's eternal, and that the expansion of our universe Is an illusion.

Scientists have found a "tipping point" in the evolution of fungi that throttles their growth and sculpts their shapes. The findings, published in the journal Cell Reports, demonstrate how small changes in environmental factors can lead to huge changes in evolutionary outcomes.

Spring weather brings welcome conditions for flowers and plant life to bloom across the land. The right mixture of temperature, moisture, and light helps keep the green world vibrant.

A system from MIT CSAIL combines simulations with physical tests to create durable and flexible microstructured materials, optimizing stiffness and toughness for varied engineering applications.

Princeton researchers have learned to harness the gossamer scaffolding that maintains the structure of living cells and used it to develop a nanotechnology platform. The technique eventually could lead to advances in soft robotics, new medicines, and the development of synthetic systems for high-precision biomolecular transport.