In 2008, excavations in a South African cave uncovered two red-stained abalone shell bowls along with various tools in what was evidently a workshop where ochre and other ingredients were mixed, most likely for use as paint. Researchers examined the artifacts and have published a study in which they say the artifacts are 100,000 years old. Could they really be that ancient?

NASA's Messenger spacecraft mission to Mercury has given scientists the opportunity to learn more about the properties of the solar system's innermost planet. After supposedly billions of years since its formation, the planet should be dead, or geologically inactive. New data from Messenger, however, show that Mercury remains active and is still generating surface features.

No flying machine or other creature has the aerial dexterity of dragonflies. They can fly upside-down and backward as easily as straight ahead. And they move so fast that researchers have to use high-speed cameras to study them.

Perhaps no realm of inquiry is as fraught with fantastic speculation as the origin of the universe. Theories of how it could have come about naturally have regularly been proposed and discarded as new evidence surfaces. Ongoing studies seem to have merely widened the gap in understanding how it began—or even how it currently works.