Stories by John Matson

The two attributes thought to be most important for a bicycle's self-stability turn out not to be necessary

Los Angeles, New York City, Virginia and Florida will each get a spacecraft from the shuttle program

Humankind has been confined to Earth's orbital environs for decades, but plans abound for manned missions to deeper reaches of the solar system

Observations from the European Space Agency's Venus Express orbiter add to the mystery of our cloud-veiled planetary neighbor

The soon-to-be-retired Tevatron collider has uncovered an unexplained signal that could be a previously unknown particle

The Falcon Heavy would deliver bigger payloads to orbit or deep space

Corrugations in the giant planets' rings seem to trace back to recent comet impacts, both seen and unseen, in decades past

One of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi reactors contains a blend of uranium and plutonium fuel that may soon find use in the U.S. Does it pose more risks than standard uranium fuel?

His discovery that some seven-dimensional spheres look different under the lens of calculus spurred decades of research in topology

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has produced several nuclei of the antimatter counterpart to helium 4

Amid conflicting evacuation recommendations, radiation experts say that exposures to date have been relatively low outside the power plant and that people in the U.S. will not face any danger

Elevated radiation levels have been detected at and around the stricken nuclear power station in Japan, but the Chernobyl accident remains far more catastrophic

Nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station in Japan are critically endangered but have not reached full meltdown status. Our nuclear primer explains what that means and how the situation compares with past nuclear accidents

After the Japan earthquake, seismic stations, deep-ocean buoys and tidal gauges delivered a wealth of data for accurate tsunami forecasts in Hawaii, California and the rest of the Pacific Rim, but public preparedness can be even more important

Is there a theory of everything? If so, is it possible to verify via experimentation? These and other questions energized a panel of physicists and their audience at this year's Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of Natural History