Social Sciences

The nose knows more than we thought

Letters to the editors for the September 2024 issue of Scientific American

The connection between queer love and the power to imagine a more sustainable future

In the often-gloomy genre of climate fiction, a new novel hits a high-water mark for its empathy

The J particle; a nitroglycerin engine

Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories

The searches for Planet Nine, bat viruses, life on Jupiter’s moon Europa and lucid dreams

Science in meter and verse

The 2024 word-of-the-year winners offer a window into the spirit of the times

The oldest human genomes ever sequenced reveal that our Neandertal ancestry came from one “pulse” of interbreeding and pins down the timing

The way scientists recognize one another’s work overlooks the seminal contributions of Black scientists. The Nobel Committees need to recognize how this excludes Black scientists from awards

Many parents choose sleep training to get their babies to sleep through the night. But the evidence supporting it is flawed