2025 was a brutal year of budget cuts and workforce attrition at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the home base for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Experts worry Goddard—and NASA’s space science—may never recover
Scientific American
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The cat is smaller than a house cat but has the spots of a leopard
Physicists cannot access anything that existed before the start of time and space, but they have theories
The space telescope is set to reveal thousands of new exoplanets and scour the universe for signs of dark matter and energy
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Earth’s annual checkup shows that we’re at increasing risk of moving away from the environment we’re adapted to
The virus is currently most prevalent in California and the southern U.S., but experts expect it to go national in the coming weeks
OpenAI’s claimed proof of the Navier-Stokes problem is a mathematical tour de force, but any real-world applications may be years away—if they ever arrive at all
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
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The National Weather Service is speeding ahead with changing the name of the Great Lake
From orbital weapons to AI risks and weaker emissions rules
Science is helping to peel back the layers of how dogs process the world around them
October 2026 Issue
Some of the biggest questions in science—about the origins of space, life and consciousness—aren't just unanswered. They may be unanswerable. That doesn't stop scientists from trying.
Elsewhere in the issue: The Desperate Hunt for Dark Matter | The Battle over Elon Musk's Colossus Data Center | Rewriting the History of American Apples
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A new report from Google, Google DeepMind and M.I.T. finds that researchers are using AI—a lot. It’s just not helping as much in the lab
Understanding how human language evolved is one of the hardest problems in science to unpick
A search for the most complex elliptic curves has taken mathematicians years. Claude beat the record in days
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Our understanding of consciousness could be fundamentally wrong
The human brain uses about the same amount of wattage as a lightbulb
More than 100,000 people in the country are over 100 years old
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Scientists are pursuing the limits of longevity
Don’t have the energy to catch your own meal? This dolphin has a gross solution
The dinosaurs were once considered reptilian, but the new results suggest we may need to rethink their evolution
Discussions
“Much as many of us may not like the notion that wealthy collectors can buy prized fossil specimens, as Dr. Kamat points out, there is at present no legal restriction for doing so. What should happen is that UNESCO or other world organizations should regulate such deals through international consent. That is unlikely to happen quickly nor universally given present…”
— Klaus R
Our sun is on a long, strange trip to its eventual demise. Here are the key stops along the way
As temperatures rise, the evidence is clear that heat is eroding students’ ability to learn
As Bangladesh faces a deadly measles outbreak, experts assess what it would take for the U.S. to reach similar levels
Filmmaker and journalist Leah Varjacques takes listeners inside an Indonesian forest that’s quickly changing as the country attempts to move its capital city
Seismic activity has increased markedly at Mount Mantap, also known as Mantapsan, since the last test blast there in 2017
And how they might have helped save the future of American apples
Independent auditors are emerging as a key part of plans to rein in frontier AI. But the systems are evolving faster than the methods used to evaluate them
The malleability of memory once cast doubt on eyewitness identification in criminal cases, but new research reveals how eyewitness memory can be used accurately
A high-ranking official announced yesterday that the U.S. military has deployed weapons into orbit to counter threats from Russia and China
The Atlantic Ocean has never seen a year without a hurricane since reliable records began
An Anthropic researcher quit over fears of runaway AI. His colleague who still works there agreed. Security experts argue that the incidents that are already on record call for tighter oversight, not panic
After months of headaches and visual hallucinations, a woman was finally revealed to have brain cysts filled with tapeworm larvae
What happens when machines surpass the most brilliant human minds? Mathematicians are finding out
The planet’s “wrinkles” give scientists a clue into how the world is contracting in size
A new declaration from winners of the Fields Medal reflects many mathematicians’ growing alarm over a “severe misalignment” between the tech industry and their field a week after AI toppled one of math’s biggest open problems
NASA’s satellites captured the aftermath of the eruption, which lasted for more than a day
The pages come from a copy of Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ that once belonged to John Gage, an enforcer in Henry VIII’s court and a key figure in the historical dissolution of the monasteries
Artificial general intelligence was once a term confined to technical science papers, but its meaning has slipped
Pancreatic cancer is typically caught in its latest stages, when it is hardest to treat
The surprising real-world applications of high-dimensional sphere packing and the 48-year-old barrier that OpenAI just broke
A quarter of a century after the Twin Towers fell, those who lived through the attacks are still seeking care for myriad illnesses, including cancers, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more