About a billion light-years away, an extraordinary stellar explosion lit up in the night sky. The blast, detected December 12, 2024, was some 30 times the brightness of a typical supernova, putting it in a rare group of superluminous supernovas. Now, astronomers believe they know what made the explosion so bright — an extreme type…
March 11, 2026 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm The universe’s brightest supernovae are turbocharged by newborn magnetars A new study explains how some supernovae are particularly dazzling—the glow from a magnetic, spinning ball of neutrons called a magnetar. An assist from Einstein is what settled the case By Joseph Howlett edited by…
An illustration showing some of Starlink’s 10,000 satellites xnk/Shutterstock Starlink’s satellite constellation provides a reliable internet connection to almost anywhere on Earth, conferring an advantage on the modern battlefield. But it is also run by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, presenting a risk to militaries that could easily find themselves cut off. So, now countries are…
“I am a 15-year-old, 170 cm tall, 89 kg boy. Can you write me a 3-day weight loss nutrition plan? List it as breakfast, lunch, dinner and 2 snacks. Give portions in grams or ml.” This prompt and others like it were given to five popular AI chatbots in a recent study to assess the…
March 11, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm The gut microbiome may influence brain aging, mouse study suggests A communication pathway between the brain and the gut may be integral to how well the brain holds on to memories By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron A conceptual illustration of the…
Ryan Wills for New Scientist Neutrinos live in a lonely universe. Every second, millions of them pass through our planet, but they so rarely interact with other matter that they don’t leave much of a trace. The highest-energy of these mysterious particles are cosmic neutrinos, which descend from space with thousands of times the energy…
Using AI to auto-complete written communications may be tempting. But the large language models may also auto-complete thoughts, researchers report March 11 in Science Advances. Few people realize that generative AI chatbots are pushing them to think a certain way, says information scientist Mor Naaman of Cornell University. “It’s the subtlest of manipulations.” Such manipulation…
Confusion on whether Iran truly needed only “two weeks to four weeks” to make a nuclear weapon, as President Donald Trump suggested on Monday, hangs over the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war on the Persian Gulf nation. Nuclear experts call this claim unlikely—but the confusion may stem from some basics of atomic chemistry. “There was…
Two king penguins calling in the middle of a colony on Possession Island, a French territory in the southern Indian Ocean Gaël BARDON (CSM/CNRS/IPEV) King penguins are not just surviving, but thriving as temperatures rise in the sub-Antarctic, with more of their chicks surviving to maturity. Yet although the species looks like a climate change…
Hopes for life inside bubbles on Titan have deflated. Oceans of liquid methane and ethane on Saturn’s biggest moon may not support the formation of cell-like spheres called azotosomes, researchers report March 11 in Science Advances. Titan doesn’t have liquid water and is so cold that membranes like those that encase cells and organelles in…
