Scientific American

While “protein maxxing” is all the rage, reducing your protein intake could add years to your life

Lakes of liquid methane on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, could offer exhilarating—and terrifying—opportunities for otherworldly surfing

The extreme conditions of atomic bomb explosions create “uncontrolled microexperiments” that, in Hiroshima, forged a never-before-seen metallic alloy

Discovered by an amateur mathematician in 2022, this strange construct can tile an infinite surface without repeating. But can it be useful in the real world?

Physicists, mathematicians and philosophers have been exploring the possibility of going forward to the future or back to the past

Many of these structures date to around C.E. 100–300, during the time of the Aquiry civilization, and may have been used for ceremonial purposes

An M.I.T. Ph.D. student and two University of California system cryptographers used GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra in different ways, raising new questions about independent discovery and scientific credit

A high-profile court case is calling attention to this rare and understudied condition

New work explains how avocado trees coordinate a complex reproductive strategy, switching every day between male and female

Frothy rock floating on the ocean near Papua New Guinea is the sign scientists needed that, hidden from view, an underwater volcano was erupting

Historian Craig Fehrman unpacks the science, politics and human stories behind one of America’s most famous expeditions

Space agencies around the globe are coordinating missions to visit the asteroid Apophis during a close encounter with Earth in 2029

David Haskell brings readers through millions of years of botanical history for his latest book, How Flowers Made Our World

Centuries-old DNA that was found in these mummies belongs to an extinct viral lineage of smallpox that was brought across the Atlantic during European colonization of the Americas

The U.S. has been pummeled with heat waves this summer. Here’s how hot overnight temperatures can get in the way of a good night’s rest—in three charts

A newly discovered change in ribosomal RNA makes protein production more precise, potentially safeguarding these cephalopods’ complex nervous systems

Giant black holes adrift in deep space are normally invisible—unless they’re dining on stars

In searches for past and present Martian life, some scientists say we’ve been too cautious to see what’s right in front of us

A private spacecraft launched to boost the decaying orbit of NASA’s Swift Observatory is now suffering from potentially mission-ending malfunctions

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

Smell can bring back vivid childhood memories—the so-called Proust’s madeleine phenomenon—and neuroscientists now think they know why

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

Joan Birman popularized the Burau representation problem decades ago. Now she and two colleagues have a proof that reveals brand new insights into the geometry of braids

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

Neuroscientists show how the brain weighs effort against reward when we're mentally fatigued

After decades of hints and speculation, scientists have at last unveiled the hidden companion to the iconic star Betelgeuse