Culture

Under former president Jair Bolsonaro, scientific misinformation ran rampant through Brazil. And even with new leadership, it will be difficult to stop

Letters to the editor for the January 2023 issue of Scientific American

Physicists attempt to weigh a vacuum and resolve the “worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics”

Mistaken fossil identity in India, decrypted letters of an imprisoned Scottish queen, marsupials seeking marsupials Down Under, and more in this month’s Quick Hits

The first timekeeping devices were probably natural materials lost to the ages, but the ancient Egyptians were the first to leave records of their timekeeping methods

Boris Eldagsen submitted an artificial-intelligence-generated image to a photography contest as a “cheeky monkey” and sparked a debate about AI’s place in the art world

Strangely real imaginary numbers, an unsung founder of quantum physics and an endless AI conversation

Reviews from the editors of Scientific American

Letters to the editor for the December 2022 issue of Scientific American

An AI-generated conversation between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek is definitely entertaining, but it also illustrates the crisis of misinformation beginning to befall us

A mourning ritual of dialogues with the dead speaks to the fragility of theological diversity

Events like the World Cup can emit millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide, but it doesn’t have to be that way