Scientific American Magazine

The first computer virus spawned an arms race in software

What persuaded the male hominid to stick around after mating?

Swiss dairy farmers created an American institution

Most living things do it, but nobody knows why

Scientists have traced malaria to its first human victims a mere 10,000 years ago

The inspiration for today's animated pictures began long ago with dreams and toys

The ancient Chinese invented fireworks to scare off 10-foot-tall mountain men

A rise in maternity ward deaths led one physician to discover the importance of hand washing

The invention of barbed wire was a huge commercial success--and the subject of furious legal battles

A sense of right and wrong starts with innate brain circuitry

A century ago taxicabs had batteries, not gas guzzlers, under their hoods

Packed living conditions made the influenza virus a leading public health threat

The first black holes are almost as old as the universe itself

Wheeled vehicles may have first arisen as a tool of war

How nothing became something

It took thousands of years to go from mush to spaghetti

Biodiversity was the first step toward complex life

Picture this: a movie revealing the inner workings of a cell or showing a nanomachine in action. A new microscopy is making such imaging possible

The night skies are littered with distant planets, but what are they really like? Theoretical models suggest that a surprising number of "exoplanets" could be similar to Earth—and may even support life

Sometimes we forget where a story really starts. Are electric cars new? Where did malaria start? Who invented spaghetti? Read on, for the surprising origins of many strange and familiar things

A voyage through the human body is no longer mere fantasy. Tiny devices may soon perform surgery, administer drugs and help diagnose disease

Small remnants of toys, bottles and packaging persist in the ocean, harming marine life and possibly even us

As if software viruses weren't bad enough, the microchips that power every aspect of our digital world are vulnerable to tampering in the factory. The consequences could be dire

Carbon dioxide emissions are making the oceans more acidic, imperiling the growth and reproduction of species from plankton to squid

Shortly after Homo sapiens arose harsh climate conditions nearly extinguished our species. Recent finds suggest that the small population that gave rise to all humans alive today survived by exploiting a unique combination of resources along the southern coast of Africa