The Sciences

Scientific American’s editor in chief sets up this week’s series of podcasts about how this election could affect science, technology and medicine.

The mission team is working to stow the sample as fast as possible to minimize losses

Observations by NASA’s SOFIA telescope and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal signs of water in sun-baked lunar soil, as well as in small, dark craters

Many of the statues not along the coast are in places that featured a resource vital to the communities that lived and worked there.

More than 40 of the birds, in coalitions of three or four, may fight for days over oak trees in which to store their acorns.

Jigsaw-puzzle-shaped seams that hold a notoriously tough insect’s wing cases together could inspire engineers

A high mountain in China turns into a safe haven for the declining insects

The volatile compounds released by microbial communities on cheese rinds shape and shift a cheese’s microbiome. Christopher Intagliata reports. 

Creating a sustainable human presence beyond low-Earth orbit requires a clear-eyed view of the risks—and rewards—inherent in spaceflight

The mass-extinction asteroid happened to strike an area where the rock contained a lot of organic matter and sent soot into the stratosphere, where it could block sunlight for years.

The spacecraft attempted to collect samples from the asteroid for eventual return to Earth

Biologists who study acorn woodpeckers’ power struggles are not the only ones watching—so are rival woodpecker groups