Scientific American

OpenAI’s proof seems eligible for a $1-million prize—but only by using a controversial loophole

The space telescope is set to reveal thousands of new exoplanets and scour the universe for signs of dark matter and energy

Earth’s annual checkup shows that we’re at increasing risk of moving away from the environment we’re adapted to

“This is probably going to be the superlative El Niño event of our lives so far,” a climate scientist says

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

The cat is smaller than a house cat but has the spots of a leopard

In parallel, a race by amateurs and mathematicians has found all 25,000 cases of one “inverse Galois problem”

The National Weather Service is speeding ahead with changing the name of the Great Lake

The virus is currently most prevalent in California and the southern U.S., but experts expect it to go national in the coming weeks

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

Science is helping to peel back the layers of how dogs process the world around them

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

Advocates and scientists warn that giving political appointees power over research grants would “upend” U.S. science

A search for the most complex elliptic curves has taken mathematicians years. Claude beat the record in days

Understanding how human language evolved is one of the hardest problems in science to unpick

From orbital weapons to AI risks and weaker emissions rules

More than 100,000 people in the country are over 100 years old

Our understanding of consciousness could be fundamentally wrong

The human brain uses about the same amount of wattage as a lightbulb

The dinosaurs were once considered reptilian, but the new results suggest we may need to rethink their evolution

Don’t have the energy to catch your own meal? This dolphin has a gross solution

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

The Atlantic Ocean has never seen a year without a hurricane since reliable records began

Our sun is on a long, strange trip to its eventual demise. Here are the key stops along the way

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

What happens when machines surpass the most brilliant human minds? Mathematicians are finding out

And how they might have helped save the future of American apples

The planet’s “wrinkles” give scientists a clue into how the world is contracting in size

NASA’s satellites captured the aftermath of the eruption, which lasted for more than a day

A high-ranking official announced yesterday that the U.S. military has deployed weapons into orbit to counter threats from Russia and China

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

Pancreatic cancer is typically caught in its latest stages, when it is hardest to treat

After months of headaches and visual hallucinations, a woman was finally revealed to have brain cysts filled with tapeworm larvae

Up and down the Pacific coast, dead gray whales are mysteriously washing ashore—and scientists think they know why

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

Artificial general intelligence was once a term confined to technical science papers, but its meaning has slipped

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