January 14, 2026 1 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm NASA Commits to Plan to Build a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon by 2030 The U.S. space agency and the Department of Energy will work together to build a fission reactor on the lunar surface in the next four years By Jackie Flynn Mogensen…
It’s getting busy in Earth orbit Maciej Frolow/Getty Images China has applied to launch nearly 200,000 satellites into Earth orbit, but the move may be an attempt at merely reserving orbital space rather than a genuine effort to build the largest mega-constellation in existence. On December 29, the newly formed Institute of Radio Spectrum Utilisation…
As technology becomes more ingrained in daily life, domestic abusers and perpetrators of human trafficking are using it in insidious new ways that can target their victims even from a distance. That’s why Nicola Dell, a computer and information scientist at Cornell Tech, studies technology-facilitated abuse and how to stop it. Her pioneering work helps…
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. What do ready-to-bake cinnamon rolls, most french fries, and many premade salad dressings have in common? They’re all made with seed oils. Until fairly recently many of us might have been concerned about how much oil those foods contained rather than…
The Sawa residential building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is made from wood Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock Cities must reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the construction of buildings and infrastructure by more than 90 per cent in the next two to four decades if the world is to avoid warming of more than 2°C. That means radical changes…
January 13, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm The Milky Way’s Central Black Hole May Have Appeared Shockingly Different Just a Few Hundred Years Ago New research suggests that the x-ray light coming from the Milky Way’s central black hole Sagittarius A* has changed dramatically in the span of just a few…
Wildfires in California in January 2025 David McNew/Getty Images The impacts of climate change are occurring sooner than expected, but governments and businesses continue to underestimate the risks, which could add up to trillions of dollars in economic losses by 2050. A report by climate scientists and financial experts has warned that the world may…
January 13, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm 2025 Wasn’t the Hottest Year on Record. Earth Is Still Barreling to the Climate Brink Global warming surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius for the past three years, meaning Earth is currently on track to breach the Paris climate agreement by the end of the decade…
Neanderthals often found refuge in caves GREGOIRE CIRADE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. It’s early January and south-west Britain is painfully cold. Not that cold, obviously: my friends in Canada and Scandinavia are laughing…
The last three years were the hottest on record, a new analysis of global climate data finds. They also mark the first three-year period in which the global average temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — a threshold associated with increased risks to biodiversity, human health and weather extremes. “1.5 degrees C is…
