History of Science

Send us photos, videos and stories illustrating how your shores and communities are rebounding—or not—from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Alcoholics Anonymous, the 80-year-old self-help program, has always had critics, who fault it for being too religious and unscientific. Journalist Gabrielle Glaser revives both these charges in her April Atlantic article, “The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous.” She claims that “researchers have debunked central tenets of A.A.

Reported in Scientific American, This Week in World War I: April 3, 1915 "The day when Constantinople will be covered by the guns of the enemy is not very far distant." That's the ebulliant sentence from the article in Scientific American two weeks before this one, just after the initial British and French attack near [...]

Scientists debate whether hunting, farming, smallpox or the nuclear bomb define the start of irreversible human impacts on our planet

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

So what would you do if I said, “Look! I got you some gold!” and handed you a chunk of this? Well, you would look at those lovely well-developed crystal faces, for one.

If ever there was a face that read, "Goddamn it, they found me," this is it. That small, downturned mouth, ever-so-slightly ajar in a moment of panicked contemplation, it really just says it all.

It's been a long time coming, but this week NASA's Mars Opportunity rover completed the first-ever Martian marathon. After landing on the Red Planet in January 2004 on a mission originally planned to only last 90 days, Opportunity has instead endured for more than a decade, and has taken eleven years and two months to [...]

A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture

What I love about the annual TED gathering in Vancouver is the way science coexists along with art, social justice, popular song and the rest of TED's eclectic mix.

Send us pix of your pies, pizzas and parties in honor of math (and circular baked goods)