This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to the team behind NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, a space telescope that launched in 2001 to map the cosmic microwave background—the earliest, oldest light we can detect from the universe’s infancy. The WMAP team will split the $3 million award, with its leaders receiving the largest shares. One of those leaders, WMAP’s chief theorist David Spergel, sat down to speak with Scientific American about WMAP’s science and its legacy.
December 3, 2017 — Lydia Chain, Michael D. Lemonick and Lee Billings
Astrophysicists searching for gravitational waves have finally learned what happens when you crash two neutron stars together--and it's very, very shiny.
October 17, 2017 — Lydia Chain, Lee Billings and Michael D. Lemonick
Poison ivy or a new perfume making you break out and itch? Your skin normally works as if in harmony to protect you from infection, but sometimes the tune your killer T cells are playing is bad news for your skin cells.
Produced with support from SC Johnson.
America is preparing for a sea-to-shining-sea solar eclipse. Here’s how you can watch the spectacular display, and maybe even snap a photo to commemorate the event, without burning your retinas or damaging your camera’s optics.
July 27, 2017 — Lydia Chain, Michael Lemonick and Lee Billings
When the Oroville Dam spillway cracked and failed after a wet California winter, a team of scientists created a one fiftieth–scale model of the damaged concrete and eroded hillside to help guide the reconstruction.
California grunions know how to make the most of a beach vacation. When the tides are right, these silvery fish flop up onto the sand and go in search of a mate.
Do you suffer from allergies? Follow the dendritic cell and the entire Scientific American Allergy Orchestra to discover how allergens from pollen to pet dander can change the body's tune.
After learning how the waterway transports a billion tons of sediment into the sea each year, scientists built a tool that may help predict the inundations that impact some 80 million people.
Thousands congregated in the nation's capital and other cities in the U.S. and around the world to support scientific research and protest Trump administration–proposed budget cuts. Scientific American spoke with researchers, students and fact-loving activists at the New York City and D.C. marches.
