Scientific American

A massive digitization project has nearly doubled the known extent of the first continent-scale road network

Eight of the top 10 officials at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have now been pushed out since President Donald Trump took office

Researchers discovered the copy of the 1,300-year-old poem lurking inside a historical text in an Italian library

The asteroid will swing by Earth on Monday and be close enough to be visible using an amateur telescope

The intimidating legacy of the scariest problem in mathematics

As world health leaders face deadly outbreaks of hantavirus and Ebola, a major pandemic preparedness report finds we are less safe from viral outbreaks than before COVID

This company says its pulsed plasma machine will deliver electricity to the grid by 2029. Some physicists warn that its promises are outrunning what the technology has proved

Start your morning with today’s Spellements. Create as many words as you can from our daily selection of letters—including one tied to recent science news. Play now.

At least six Americans are believed to have been exposed to the Ebola virus, and one person who appears to have contracted the virus has been evacuated to Germany

Sharla Boehm, a math teacher, spent her summers coding. She’d go on to build what would eventually evolve into the Internet

The long-tailed pygmy rice rat is the primary host for Andes virus, the type of hantavirus responsible for sickening passengers on the MV Hondius cruise ship

A growing body of research suggests cannabis poses risks to the developing brain

Fix the matchstick equation in this math puzzle

Door-building spiders; a new quantum liquid

A strange, tiny fish that resembles the famous Sesame Street character camouflages amid red algae thanks to its flamboyant reddish “hairs”

Mosaic depictions of a weapon-wielding female gladiator are the first physical evidence showing women in ancient Rome could be skilled beast hunters

Sometimes science does make our world turn upside down

To build its moon base, NASA needs a lot of power

Quantum computing could lead to revolutions in cryptography, materials design and telecommunications. But fulfilling those promises could be many years away

Commercial satellites can now watch much of Earth in near-real time. Militaries are learning new ways to fool them

Here are six ways to build a quantum computer

Letters to the editors for the February 2026 issue of Scientific American

What you should know about hantavirus, why PCOS is getting a new name, and how some fish hide in an unusual spot

Ozempic and just getting older take off muscle. New therapies could retain it

Science in meter and verse

Genetic analysis suggests interbreeding between two groups of human relatives

Play this crossword inspired by the June 2026 issue of Scientific American

Researchers know very little about how long the Andes version of the hantavirus can remain in human hosts

Researchers at the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory worked round the clock to develop a test for the Andes virus at the center of the deadly cruise ship outbreak

This snail became the first animal living on deep-sea hydrothermal vents to be added to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species—it also turns poisonous sulfur into armor

The filmmaker behind the newly released movie Silent Friend shares the scientific and historical inspiration for its story of botanical consciousness

The hantavirus cruise outbreak may not have started in a garbage dump in Ushuaia, Argentina, after all