The Science of <i>Star Wars</i>

It may have come from George Lucas's imagination, but there's plenty of science to be found in Jedis and droids hopping between planets

How close has science brought us to clone armies squaring off against blaster-wielding droids?

See the softer, more digital side of Jedi Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Get a first look at Anakin, Obi-Wan and a young Jedi trainee as they prepare to do battle with a new enemy in The Clone Wars

Excerpts from the book by Jeanne Cavelos

A look at some of our extreme planetary neighbors right here in the Milky Way Galaxy

New approaches to space sail technology could give a much-needed push to interplanetary, and even interstellar, travel

The creator of Dolly the sheep has ended his focus on somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning, in favor of another approach to create stem cells

A University of Florida researcher has plans on the drawing board for a saucer-shaped aircraft that turns the surrounding air into fuel

Our intuitions about consciousness in other beings and objects reveal a lot about how we think

On other worlds, plants could be red, blue, even black

Nukes will not be needed to guard against dangers from space

A recent shift in U.S. military strategy and provocative actions by china threaten to ignite a new arms race in space. But would placing weapons in space be in anyone's national interest?

But are the dangers as overplayed as the Pentagon's dreams of robot battalions?

A rhesus monkey uses thought to make a robot walk, paving the way for paralysis victims to move using brain-powered prosthetic limbs

In pursuit of evidence that life arose on Earth more than once, scientists are searching for microbes that are radically different from all known organisms

How realistic are images of planets around other stars—and should they be? CLICK HERE FOR AN IMAGE GALLERY

Stem cells mend broken rat hearts, stone cold sober astronauts and more…

Solid-state lasers near battlefield deployment

The leader of the PC revolution predicts that the next hot field will be robotics

Creating a revolutionary jet engine that could propel a space plane to orbit affordably and routinely is a tough but seemingly achievable task

Hiroshi Ishiguro makes perhaps the most humanlike robots around--not particularly to serve as societal helpers but to tell us something about ourselves

Statistical methods hold the promise of moving computerized translation out of the doldrums

More and more athletes are engaging in mental workouts to give themselves that extra edge