Stories by Sam Macdonald

Sam Macdonald is a 2026 AAAS Mass Media fellow at Scientific American and soon to be an assistant professor of mathematics at Augustana University. He enjoys rock climbing, strategic hammock placement and the axiom of choice.

A research volunteer uses augmented reality goggles to perform astronaut-like tasks during a simulated space mission.

Space ExplorationJuly 2, 2026

NASA needs volunteers to spend a year locked in a Mars simulation

The space agency has put out a call for its Moon & Mars Exploration Analog, which recreates the challenges of a long-duration space mission

Sam Macdonald

Artist concept of the gas giant planet WD 1856 b orbiting a white dwarf star.

Planetary ScienceJuly 1, 2026

This planet survived the death of its star—and kept its atmosphere

Astronomers have for the first time observed an atmosphere around a giant planet orbiting a white dwarf

Sam Macdonald

A smartphone mounted in a car displays a navigation map as blurred lights appear through the windshield at night.

PrivacyJuly 1, 2026

The Supreme Court just limited police access to your phone’s location trail

A new decision rules that geofence warrants are Fourth Amendment searches, but it stops short of banning police access to revealing location histories

Sam Macdonald

A digital illustration of a face in purple on a black background

Artificial IntelligenceJune 29, 2026

How to spot an AI-generated face, according to science

Training people to pay attention to the right visual cues nearly doubled how accurately they could spot AI-generated faces

Sam Macdonald

Blue glowing gravitational waves, computer generated

Black HolesJune 26, 2026

What happens at the edge of a black hole? Astronomers may be close to finding out

The discovery of a completely new type of gravitational wave could reveal what happens near a black hole’s event horizon

Sam Macdonald

A close-up view of dozens of used wine bottle closures piled together, including natural corks, synthetic corks, and plastic stoppers. The corks vary in color and shape, with many bearing winery names, logos, and vintage markings in black, purple, orange, yellow, and cream tones.

Materials ScienceJune 19, 2026

Scientists pop the cork on the hidden chemistry inside wine bottles

A new study captures how cork, wine and air interact over time

Sam Macdonald

A large, red, irregularly shaped cloud sprawls across the upper half of the image. The background is sprinkled with yellow-white stars, with two brilliant ones, located in the middle and about 25 percent from the left and right sides of the image, forming large circles with diffraction spikes. At center is a short arc of gas in violet. To its right, yellow-white streamers of gas form a domelike structure, while at the base of the dome, the streamers seem to become uncontained, spreading in curving arcs. An irregular red streamer forms a ring at the dome’s base, about halfway into the full structure. Splotches of orange and brown formless obvious clouds throughout the scene.

AstronomyJune 19, 2026

Scientists discover remnants of Jellyfish Nebula’s ‘sibling’ supernova

Astronomers may have found the remains of two long-dead stellar siblings

Sam Macdonald

A close-up Hubble image of the galaxy DF9 is shown beneath a wider view of the surrounding NGC 1052 region.

AstrophysicsJune 17, 2026

Astronomers discover another galaxy seemingly devoid of dark matter

A galaxy appears to be missing the invisible substance thought to hold such objects together, further challenging long-held assumptions about how galaxies form

Sam Macdonald

Researchers and data visualization experts plotted the dense map of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi around the world, down to each square kilometer.

EarthJune 11, 2026

See the hidden fungal network so big it could stretch to Proxima Centauri and back

Researchers have created the first high-resolution global map of the extent of one of Earth’s largest—and least visible—living networks

Sam Macdonald