Scientific American
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Awesome discoveries. Expert insights. Science that shapes the world.
Joined May 2008
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Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in our 175-year history—until now. The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death. We urge you to vote for health, science and Joe Biden for President.
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For only the second time in our 179-year history, the editors of Scientific American are endorsing a candidate for president. That person is @KamalaHarris. | Editorial
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The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his willfully ignorant response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives.
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Editorial: Instead of thinking about whether to vote Democratic or Republican in the upcoming U.S. election, think about voting to protect science instead of destroying it.
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“We are a wave of change. Together and united, we are unstoppable. This is what people power looks like. We will rise to the challenge," said 16-year-old climate activist @GretaThunberg who led global protests today demanding action on climate change. #ClimateStrike 📸 Liz Tormes
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Elon Musk seeks to enable humans to “merge” with AI, giving people superhuman intelligence. (By @tanyalewis314)
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Joe Biden will soon be president of the United States, and scientists the world over are breathing a collective sigh of relief.
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Kamala Harris has plans to improve health, boost the economy, and mitigate climate change. Donald Trump has threats and a dangerous record. That’s why the editors of Scientific American are endorsing Kamala Harris for president. | Editorial
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Cardiac coherence breathing exercises can stabilize the heartbeat and have a powerful ability to dampen anxiety.
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A steadily growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" claims do not reflect transgender adolescents’ experiences and that “social contagion” is not causing more young people to seek gender-affirming care.
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Instead of a wall, we could build solar and wind farms, plus 2,000 miles of natural gas and water pipelines to power and supply water for farms and industry along the entire U.S.–Mexico border, creating a zone of opportunity for both countries. Crazy idea?
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The notion that men evolved to hunt and women to tend to children and domestic duties is one of anthropology’s most influential ideas. But the available data do not support it. Evidence from studies of physiology, archaeology and fossils point to women having a long history of
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A novel way of making superheavy elements could soon add a new row to the periodic table, allowing scientists to explore uncharted atomic realms
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A novel way of making superheavy elements could soon add a new row to the periodic table, allowing scientists to explore uncharted atomic realms
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As the daughter of a cancer researcher, Kamala Harris would bring a lifelong familiarity with science to the presidency, experts say
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Freeman Dyson has died at 96. Dyson helped construct the standard model of particle physics, and he envisioned the Singularity decades before that term was adopted. A tribute, by @Horganism.
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A tough but flexible robot unfurls like a plant using a pressurized plastic tube to inch through rugged environments.
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Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term “climate emergency” in its coverage of climate change. Read our statement about this decision, and the impact we hope it can have throughout the media landscape.
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Research shows that even mild COVID-19 can lead to the equivalent of seven years of brain aging
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Nikola Tesla was born on this day in 1856. Read the autobiographical sketch he wrote in the June 1915 issue of Scientific American:
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A frozen super-Earth may orbit Barnard’s Star. At just six light years away, the candidate planet would be the second-closest world known beyond our solar system—and a prime target for future studies. (By @LeeBillings)
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Your dog may not be a genius, after all. A new study finds that canines are not exceptional in the animal world.
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In Opinion. Stop using phony science to justify transphobia. Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary
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The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. Hubble sees back to roughly 13.5 billion years. #JWST was designed to peer into a part of the universe we've never seen before—when the first galaxies came to existence, the first stars came into life, the first black holes appeared.
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Jupiter now has 69 moons: two new satellites join the gas giant's family
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The first gender affirmation surgeries took place in the 1920s, at a Berlin clinic that employed transgender technicians and nurses and was headed by a gay Jewish man. The Nazis destroyed it in their first book burning.
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Decades of data support the use and safety of puberty-pausing medications, which give transgender adolescents and their families time to weigh important medical decisions
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Three types of misinformation are being used against transgender people: oversimplifying scientific knowledge, fabricating and misinterpreting research, and promoting false equivalences.
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For thousands of years, scholars pondered the question of how anything can move in our world. The problem seemed to have been solved—until the development of quantum mechanics
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Donna Strickland is the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. "We need to celebrate women physicists because we're out there," she said upon hearing the news. “Hopefully in time it will move forward at a faster rate. I am honored to be one of those women.”
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For this experiment, a researcher talked to eight-week-old puppies that had previously had little experience with humans. Specifically, the experimenter would say: “Hi pup. Are you a good puppy? Yes, you are! What a good puppy!”
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COVID-19 can wreck your heart, even if you haven't had any symptoms
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Luminous zebra fish wins contest for microscopic photography
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Science means being able to change your mind in light of new evidence
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Gentle nasal spray vaccines against COVID, the flu and RSV are coming. They may work better than shots in the arm
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“Damage from the Charles Koch Floods along the Missouri River are being compounded by heavy rains from Hurricane Inhofe.” A proposal to name climate disasters after polluters and people who have enabled them. | Commentary
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Scientists are finding that pterosaurs were even more extraordinary than we ever imagined
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Monumental disaster at the Department of the Interior: a new report documents suppression of science, denial of climate change, the silencing and intimidation of staff
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“We’re still in a pandemic,” says a lead COVID official with the World Health Organization
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On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon. Video:
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Ahead of Trump decision, China says it will stick to Paris climate deal
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This year, Scientific American endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in our 175-year history. The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death. We urge you to vote for science, health and Joe Biden for President.
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Exercise is not optional; it is essential. Humans have evolved to require high levels of physical activity to be healthy. 🔒
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Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, a study shows. And the American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male that meets a very specific profile.
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The temperature in Death Valley could rise above 130 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend. If it does, it would set a record for the hottest temperature ever reliably measured on Earth
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A rectangular nine-volt battery is basically just a bunch of smaller batteries in a trench coat
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Stephen Hawking was born on this day in 1942. He was one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century and perhaps the most celebrated icon of contemporary science.
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At the North Pole, 24 time zones collide at a single point, rendering them meaningless. It’s simultaneously all of Earth’s time zones and none of them.
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Mark Kelly has won a seat in the U.S. Senate, making him only the fourth NASA astronaut to be elected to Congress.
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With the detection of a long-predicted “neutrino fog,” the search for particles of dark matter has entered a new age of both possibility and peril
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Scientific American has endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in our 175-year history. We urge you to vote for @JoeBiden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment: #Election2020
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China is once again on the threshold of a historic first in its fast-paced exploration of Earth’s moon.
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Helen Edwards was a particle physicist who led the design and construction of the Tevatron, a machine built to probe deeper into the atom than anyone had gone before.
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See iridescent jellyfish and glowing wonders of the sea in World Oceans Day photos
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Research shows that even mild COVID-19 can lead to the equivalent of seven years of brain aging
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After more than two decades of research, the world finally has an approved Ebola vaccine.
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Small farmers in Mexico keep corn’s genetic diversity alive
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In computer science, Pāṇini–Backus form is a way of notating syntactical features of programming languages. It is named for 4th-century BCE Indian scholar and linguist Pāṇini and John Backus (1924–2007), who further developed the idea 2,400 years later!
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First published on this day in 1845, Scientific American is the longest continuously running magazine in the U.S. We have been the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology for 173 years. #HappyBirthdaySciAm 🎂
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How diversity makes us smarter: being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working
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Science, built on facts and evidence-based analysis, is fundamental to a safe and fair America.
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Candidates with science and technical backgrounds are running for Congress this year in unprecedented numbers.
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We are living through a terrible time in humanity. Here’s why we tend to stick our heads in the sand and why we need to pull them out, fast | Opinion
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Happy 84th birthday, Dr. Jane Goodall! In this interview from October, the famed primatologist talks about her past work, her environmental concerns and the importance of conservation @JaneGoodallInst
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At last, a black hole’s image revealed. The Event Horizon Telescope accomplishes a historic feat, capturing one of the universe’s most mysterious objects #EHTBlackhole (By @LeeBillings)
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A new study shows that hundreds of thousands more Black people in the U.S. would qualify for a lung disease diagnosis and disability payments if lung-function measurements weren’t adjusted for race
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The world is gradually becoming less green, scientists have found.
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If corrective facts only make matters worse, what can we do to convince people of the error of their beliefs? . 🔥 This was one of our most popular stories in 2017.
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Australia's angry summer: This is what climate change looks like. The catastrophic fires raging across the southern half of the continent are largely the result of rising temperatures (By @dr_nerilie in Opinion)
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Homeopathic medicine labels now must state products do not work
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Since Bolsonaro took office in January, Brazil’s researchers have faced funding cuts and repeated attempts by the administration to roll back protections for the environment and Indigenous populations.
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Psychedelic drugs in combination with psychotherapy "are remarkably efficient at treating depression." An analysis of serotonergic psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin and DMT from neuroscientist Austin Lim.
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The claim that Indigenous students in residential schools “only” died of TB is an attempt to whitewash what survivors and scholars recognize as genocide. The institutions caused the high death rates among more than 150,000 children taken from their homes.
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Jane Goodall, still traveling the world and speaking up for animals at 83
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Joe Biden will spend his first hours as president trying to obliterate much of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda, restore public land protections and reestablish the U.S. as a global leader on climate change policy.
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Sleep deprivation shuts down production of essential brain proteins
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If Obama’s Clean Power Plan is scrubbed, pollution from coal plants will choke agricultural productivity.
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Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, a recent study shows. And the American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male that meets a very specific profile. This was one of our most-read stories in 2018.
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More firearms do not keep people safe, research show. Why do so many Americans believe the opposite? #guncontrol
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The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs created the Amazon rain forest
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Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time
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The adult brain does grow new neurons after all, study says
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"The data show very clearly that where you had Black Lives Matter protests, killing of people by the police decreased. It’s inescapable from this study that protest matters—that it can generate change,” says sociologist Aldon Morris
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