Blood at a crime scene that contained a Y chromosome led to a rare discovery Shutterstock/PeopleImages The forensic examination of a murder victim has revealed that she had chimerism – meaning her body contained cells that were genetically distinct, as if they came from two different individuals. In this case, the unidentified woman had varying proportions of male…
Visual China Group via Getty Images In Roald Dahl’s novel James and the Giant Peach, magic crystals cause a withered peach tree to produce a spectacular, juicy, house-sized peach. How nice would it be, people thought, if we could grow massive fruit in real life – perhaps without also spawning giant insect pests and having…
Changing the rules of chess can make the game more complex Richard Levine/Alamy Chess can be improved by rearranging the positions of the starting pieces to produce a more difficult or fairer game, a physicist has found. A standard game of chess always starts with the pieces at the back of the board arranged with…
Artist’s impression of the free-floating planet lensing light from a distant source J. Skowron/OGLE Nearly 10,000 light years away, a planet the size of Saturn is floating all on its own through empty space. In a stroke of luck, researchers were able to spot this strange, dark world using both ground-based telescopes and the Gaia…
When we imagine a planet, we think of one like ours, orbiting a star. But some have a far lonelier existence, drifting through interstellar space without a sun to call their own. Known as “rogue” or “free-floating” planets, these worlds are often challenging to study. With no known star and no orbit from which to…
Flocean’s subsea desalination pod Flocean Turning seawater into drinking water is so costly and energy-intensive that it’s untenable in most parts of the world, but a Norwegian company is trialling a new approach that could change that. Flocean will launch the world’s first commercial-scale subsea desalination plant in 2026, and says its system will cut…
December 31, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm The Push to Make Semiconductors in Space Just Took a Serious Leap Forward Space Forge plans to manufacture semiconductors from space—without the need for humans By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron Narumon Bowonkitwanchai via Getty Images Space Forge is on a mission…
The MMX probe will visit Mars’s moons JAXA The mystery of how Mars acquired its moons, Phobos and Deimos, may start to be unravelled in 2026 with the launch of a spacecraft that will eventually bring a chunk of Phobos back to Earth. “We are sure about the origin of the Earth’s moon, but we…
January 1, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm You Need to See the First Fiery Meteor Shower of 2026 The new year has arrived, and the Quadrantid meteor shower is coming in hot. Here’s how to see this often-spectacular shower at its peak By Claire Cameron edited by Clara Moskowitz The new…
Achieving a healthy weight could become more and more attainable as time goes on Merch Hub/Shutterstock The past few years have seen the emergence of highly effective drugs for treating obesity, and the hope is that the experimental treatments on trial in 2026 will prove to be even more effective. “We are witnessing an exciting…
