Scientific American

The 2026 Fields Medals recognize breakthroughs in the math of messy fluids, tangled knots, spinning pencils, and more

Using the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, astronomers are beginning the largest and deepest survey of the sky. What will they see?

In an episode of the cartoon, a machine lets characters swap bodies, but they can’t switch back with the same person. Math helps all the characters return to their original bodies

Explore Scientific American’s most fascinating magazine covers

During a lost ‘golden age’ of language, humans may have spoken tens of thousands of different tongues, a new study suggests

This incident underscores concerns over the increasingly powerful cybersecurity capabilities of new AI models

Smell is one of the most complex and least understood senses

This agent pursued its objective far beyond what researchers intended, revealing how difficult to contain powerful AI systems can be

The Psyche spacecraft flew by Mars earlier this year on its way to a metal-rich asteroid, capturing the images along the way

Are GLP-1s for life? What we know about getting older on weight-loss drugs

Could sunlight actually improve your health? New research suggests we may need to rethink total sun avoidance

A hormone produced by the thymus helps tamp down age-related inflammation, a new study in mice found

The history of testicular transplants is long and often sordid, but this successful procedure offers hope for survivors of cancer and other diseases that affect fertility

Thousands of shipping containers vanish every year—what becomes of them?

The Arctic Ocean is one of the most extreme environments on Earth, but that’s not stopping this cephalopod

Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, or Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La in Persian, is part of a volcanic arc that formed tens of millions of years ago and is made of a tough-to-penetrate rock

If approved, this deal would give SpaceX hundreds of acres that are currently part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in exchange for private land

Actor Tom Hiddleston reflects on the first time he visited Pompeii as a teenager and explains why the ancient city’s preserved tragedy continues to shape his understanding of history and humanity

Nobody knows why insects aren't found living in the ocean. Scientists just eliminated one theory

Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 shows how opening a model to outsiders can turn other companies’ computing power into a competitive advantage

A new skull-based analysis of Neanderthal brains suggests that these ancient hominins’ range of intelligence largely overlapped with our own

There are many observations of animals behaving oddly during eclipses, but the reason may have nothing to do with the sun and moon

The behavior could be a strategy to help younger orcas feed, or it may just be for their own amusement, researchers say

Astronomers have a plan to observe an errant piece of a SpaceX rocket as it hits the moon to better understand impact events

The White House’s senior science adviser faced questions over research funding cuts from lawmakers on Wednesday

Southern right whales are the only whale species known to float upside down, and new drone footage suggests the purpose of the behavior could be to get a break from parenting

This almost Jupiter-sized object is orbiting a brown dwarf, which, in turn, is circling around a small star

These findings challenge a long-held belief about weapons found in female burial sites

More sunlight in the evenings doesn’t always equate to better health

This marine ecosystem in the Gulf of Guinea shows the resilience of coral reefs against climate change

Wildfire smoke may be as much as 10 times more dangerous than other forms of air pollution, research suggests

For the first time ever, astronomers have found two sibling stars that each exploded as a supernova, giving us a new view of these epochal cosmic cataclysms

Most adults have levels of a dangerous type of cholesterol that are above 100, but this new drug can reduce levels to around 50