Ethan Siegel has just written an article, "The Science Has Spoken: Pluto Will Never Be A Planet Again", so this is a response to it. I'll argue that far from "story over", actually we could make a discovery tomorrow that would turn the whole thing on its head and make their definition untenable.  This will become particularly acute if we ever find a gas giant in the outer reaches of our solar system, too far away to clear its orbit. And we could find such a planet.

Elementary particles are mysterious and unfathomable, and it takes giant accelerators and incredibly complex devices to study them. In the last 100 years we have made great strides in the investigations of the properties of quarks, leptons, and vector bosons, but I would lie if I said we know half of what we would like to. In science, the opening of a door reveals others, closed by more complicated locks - and no clearer example of this is the investigation of subatomic matter. 

To the outside world, muscles look like they contract or do work but at the very small scale it is
myosin molecules pulling actin filaments and myosin and actin are essentially nanomachines that convert the chemical energy of ATP hydrolysis - how cells in our muscles create energy - into mechanical work.

New electron cryomicroscopy images reveal unexpectedly large conformational changes in the myosin molecule during the pull and that may show how myosin generates force and create a paradigm for the construction of true nanomachines.

An expert witness is a person authorized by a judge to share professional opinions in a court of law about subjects in which the expert was found to be sufficiently knowledgeable and competent.  

During criminal or civil litigation, the permission granted to expert witnesses to give their opinions about topics of interest (DNA, fingerprints, accounting, ballistics, engineering, toxicology, and so forth) gives them considerable power and influence in the courtroom as compared to other kinds of witnesses.

If you’ve ever needed a blood transfusion, or donated blood, you probably would have been asked your blood type. While it was once thought all blood was the same, we now know there are different types of blood, called blood groups. Transfusions between blood groups can be catastrophic, even deadly, so knowing the blood type of donors and recipients is of the utmost importance.

Our bodies contain trillions of red blood cells. Each is covered in an array of proteins and sugars, inherited from our parents, which determine our blood group. We can all be classified into group A, B, AB or O, based on which sugars coat our red blood cells.

This is the first of a series of articles on Huanglongbing (Citrus Greening Disease) that is devastating Florida. Subsequent articles will explore its causes, effects and potential cures. 

As anti-smoking groups like the American Council on Science and Health have long contended, while nicotine may be addictive, so are lots of things, from video games to coffee. It's the toxins in cigarette smoke that will kill you.

For that reason, public-health oriented anti-smoking groups have embraced nicotine vaping devices ("e-cigarettes") as one tool in the tool chest of harm reduction and (preferably) smoking cessation. Yet some smoking groups, and even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have migrated from being a war on cigarettes to being in war on some tobacco products, including nicotine vapor yet, oddly, not nicotine gums and patches.

The manufacture of cement, bricks, bathroom tiles and porcelain crockery normally requires a great deal of heat: a kiln is used to fire the ceramic materials at temperatures well in excess of 1,000°C. Now, material scientists from ETH Zurich have developed what seems at first glance to be an astonishingly simple method of manufacture that works at room temperature. The scientists used a calcium carbonate nanopowder as the starting material and instead of firing it, they added a small amount of water and then compacted it.

Data from online video games has been used to study what kinds of practice and habits help people acquire skill. Basically, what does it take to get good? 10,000 hours, as Malcom Gladwell said? Nope, not even close. But there are reasons why some people are great in The Division and you die in the Dark Zone within seconds after meeting another player. Basically, they learned shortcuts and before they ever met you, they warmed up.