Getty Images For Unsplash+ You would be forgiven for thinking that the big story in autism last year was a claimed link between taking paracetamol (also called acetaminophen) in pregnancy and a child’s chance of being diagnosed with autism or ADHD. When the administration of Donald Trump floated this poorly evidenced connection, the media response…
A male Hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) displays his dominant status by mounting a lower-ranking male Ger Bosma/Alamy Same-sex sexual behaviour may help monkeys and apes rise up the social ranks and ultimately have more offspring – and it seems to be especially beneficial in harsh environments where there are lots of predators, say, or a…
What’s the perfect number of cards for playing poker? According to a new mathematical discovery, the answer is the traditional 52. Almost. In Texas Hold’em poker, players wager on the best five-card hand they can make among the two cards in their hand and the communal ones on the table. Hands are ranked based on…
In the Altes Museum in Berlin stands a boy with his arms raised to the heavens. Aside from the right heel, which is slightly arched, this ancient Greek statue is almost perfectly symmetrical. Did the sculptor impose this balance for purely artistic reasons? Hermann Weyl thought not. We are drawn to symmetry, said the German…
Since the Kepler Space Telescope began its prowl for exoplanets in 2009, it has uncovered a strange pattern among these alien worlds: their orbits follow a consistent rhythm. If one planet in a system takes twice as long to orbit its star as the planet before it, for instance, then the next planet should take…
An artist’s impression of an exoplanet ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser) Quantum computers may help us see more exoplanets – and see them in more detail too. Astronomers have now found thousands of planets beyond our solar system, but they anticipate that there are actually billions of these exoplanets out there. Identifying and studying them is an…
Deception and intrigue are not limited to people or even animals. Plants, too, have evolved ways to fool their pollinators, their enemies and even the organisms that disperse their seeds. Now an international team has uncovered trickery in a climbing vine that fooled even them. The black-bulb yam (Dioscorea melanophyma) makes fake berries that help the…
January 12, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Sick Astronaut on ISS Forces Early Command Transfer from NASA Crew Member to Russian Cosmonaut NASA astronaut and ISS leader Mike Fincke transferred station command to a Russian cosmonaut ahead of an unprecedented medical evacuation By Claire Cameron edited by Clara Moskowitz Screenshot via…
The Stabian Baths, one of the bathhouses first built by the Samnites in Pompeii Icas94/De Agostini via Getty Images A trip to Pompeii’s public baths meant taking a dip in water contaminated with sweat and urine – until the Romans took over and sanitation improved. It’s easy to think of ancient Pompeii as a typical…
The density of fine hairs on bumblebees’ tongues determines how much nectar they can collect — and workers put queen bees to shame.
