Scientific American

How people interact with their inner and outer worlds may shape how they approach generative AI

A new executive order calls for more than 1,000 U.S. rocket launches per year by the end of the decade. Rethinking the nation’s spaceports will be key

From flashing fireflies to human music, many biological rhythms appear to converge on the same rhythmic range

Autocracy wasn’t inevitable in early civilizations. But when riches were there to monopolize, strongmen and inequalities emerged

Collectively intelligent bricks figure out if they’re in a boat, chair or guitar

You have two nails in the wall and a painting with a string on its back, which can easily be rested on the nails to hang the painting. If you remove one nail, the painting will still hang on the other. But mathematicians said, “We can make it worse.” In 1997 A. Spivak posed the following riddle: Is there a way to hang the painting so that removing either nail will cause the painting to fall? Sinc…

Huntington’s disease is an inherited condition that gradually robs people of their ability to move, speak and even think clearly—there is no cure

The silliest science awards of the year are here, but the Ig Nobels aren’t just funny business

Experts say there is not enough evidence to support broadly screening men for testosterone without any symptoms

A researcher’s social media post revealing how to break part of a popular encryption protocol has gone viral. But did he really do it with just “good old pencil and paper”?

The newfound star S301 orbits the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole so closely that its view of the heavens gets twisted

Author Sarah Pierce explores dating apps, loneliness and human connection through a novel about a corpse-matching algorithm

The findings, which were made in mice, may offer a new way to prevent a common chemotherapy side effect that can last well beyond treatment

In a critical maneuver on Thursday, the mission successfully deployed its two science orbiters—beginning the final phases of its arrival at Mercury

It started when the pygmy raccoon dove into the wrong trash bin—not the bin known by her family for its tasty food scraps but the one with paper and plastic waste. Last January Nessie O’Neil, a graduate student in biology at Miami University in Ohio, watched as a young pygmy raccoon plucked a receipt from the paper trash. The raccoon used her paws to repeatedly dunk the receipt into a bowl of wat…

The world is set to blow past the Paris Agreement’s longtime threshold “within the next few years,” according to a new report

The Trump administration has so far been silent on flu, COVID and RSV vaccine guidance for the coming season, even as these diseases kill thousands of people every year

A recent CDC analysis says that, between 2016 and 2024, the rate of high blood pressure among pregnant women rose by 73 percent

Giving old mice semaglutide—commonly sold as Wegovy or Ozempic—extends their lifespan remarkably, a new study finds

A floating island in a Canadian reservoir moved more than 30 kilometers across the water—here’s why