Stories by Sarah Scoles

Rachel Feltman joins Vox’s Unexplainable to discuss the enduring mysteries that continue to challenge science

Will some of the biggest mysteries in science remain forever unsolved?

Scientists disagree on how biology got started and on whether we can ever know for sure

After decades of hype, directed-energy weapons may offer the U.S. military a cheaper answer to the expensive problem of stopping drones

Golden Dome’s most audacious element would require a vast constellation of weapons that does not yet exist. Defense companies are already lining up to build it

The Department of Energy bills Genesis as an AI push for scientific discovery. Its first public challenges tell a different story

The great American brain drain could define science for a generation

Commercial satellites can now watch much of Earth in near-real time. Militaries are learning new ways to fool them

The SciFy program tests whether adversaries’ most outlandish scientific claims add up or fall apart

Scientists are designing techniques to smash up space rocks that could be headed our way

A Rhode Island start-up is working to recycle spent nuclear fuel into long-lasting power systems for the military

Physicists cannot access anything that existed before the start of time and space, but they have theories

An idea about the sun’s magnetic field called the terminator model could help predict dangerous space weather more accurately

These hobbyists use GPS coordinates to hunt for secret prizes around the world

An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

The search for extraterrestrial life has periodically been turned upside down

Surveys show that how nuclear strike options are presented strongly influences the decision a president may make

A new telescope project called the Next-Generation Very Large Array will revolutionize radio astronomy if it gets the funding it needs

Studying how extraterrestrials might communicate could help prepare for first contact and also hint at the point of language itself

Several companies have contracts with NASA to design private space habitats to replace the International Space Station once it’s gone

According to a tenet scientists call the cosmological principle, our place in space is in no way exceptional. But recent observations could overturn this long-held assumption

A special spacecraft will guide the space station through Earth’s atmosphere, but what about other large pieces of space debris?

NASA’s Artemis moon program faces challenges the Apollo missions never did

Reductions to American research at the South Pole could affect the politics of the southernmost continent