The Sciences

The car-sized rover is the first step in an ambitious effort to bring pieces of the Red Planet back to Earth, but some crucial details remain undecided

Some thoughts triggered by the death of the mathematician John Conway

Aerodynamics, androids and fly larvae feature in our curated collection of top indie tunes inspired by science

Thoughts on scientific ambition and progress, 20 years after the first draft of the genome was completed

It is the wood that the rock greats have sworn by—swamp ash, in the form of their Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars—for more than 70 years. If you have ever listened to rock, you have probably heard a solid-body swamp ash guitar. But now climate change is threatening the wood that helped build rock and roll.

In today’s podcast, veteran guitarist Jim Campilongo takes us through the finer points of swamp ash and what it would mean to lose it. 

Bonus material: Here’s Campilongo showing the difference between the sound of a solid-body swamp ash guitar and a hollow-body one. 

And here’s a little information about Campilongo’s latest project: He teams up with his longtime collaborator Luca Benedetti on the album Two Guitars. Check it out.

Editor’s Not (2/16/21): This podcast incorrectly stated that the article on climate change and swamp ash in the February 2021 edition of Scientific American was authored by Priyanka Runwal and Andrea Thompson. The author was Runwal alone.

A new wave of research is needed to make ample use of humanity’s “most wondrous map”

Experiments on clusters of cultured cells hint that a gene variant found only in Homo sapiens profoundly changed brain development in our species, compared with our extinct relatives

Sound waves from fin whales can help scientists probe Earth’s crust

Flakes’ final shape depends on an array of temperature, humidity and wind speed variables

Now in orbit, the spacecraft will attempt a landing later this year

Spotted hyena males do not fight for mates, so how are certain males shut out of the mating game?

The United Arab Emirates’ first interplanetary mission reaches its destination scarcely a decade after the country’s first satellite launch