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…
March 11, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm AI autocomplete doesn’t just change how you write. It changes how you think AI-powered writing tools are increasingly integrated into our e-mails and phones. Now a new study finds biased AI suggestions can sway users’ beliefs By Claire Cameron edited by Clara Moskowitz wildpixel…
Even small magnets can sometimes be exceptionally powerful ResonX /Jasmin Schoenzart A magnet small enough to fit in the palm of your hand can match the strength of some of the world’s most powerful magnets for the first time. Strong magnets play many roles across science and technology, with uses in everything from MRI imaging…
The Amazon molly is an evolutionary enigma: an all-female fish that reproduces by cloning itself. Because it doesn’t mix its DNA with a mate’s, Darwinian logic holds that harmful mutations should pile up over time, eventually driving the species extinct. Yet the molly (Poecilia formosa) has stubbornly refused to follow that script. That seems to…
The Kīlauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island erupted on Tuesday in a nine-hour spectacular in which it shot fountains of lava some 1,300 feet into the air, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The eruption generated “significant heat and ash,” USGS said, with some six inches of “tephra”—bits of volcanic material, ranging from glasslike particles…
Testing how much pleasure people get when sniffing a lemon could be a novel way to detect Parkinson’s disease Getty Images People with Parkinson’s disease seem less able to enjoy pleasant smells, such as lemon. The discovery has led scientists to conclude that “the world smells different” with the condition. Utilising this could help doctors…
Music makes people move and groove, often in surprisingly involuntary ways. As it turns out, we even blink in time to the beat, researchers report in PLOS Biology. “Our eyes—which we usually think of as purely visual organs—spontaneously dance to the rhythm of what we hear,” says study co-author Du Yi, a cognitive neuroscientist at…
A small number of companies are working on biological computers Floriana/Getty Images Data centres use huge amounts of energy and chips are in high demand – could brain cells be the answer? Australia-based start-up Cortical Labs has announced it is building two “biological” data centres in Melbourne and Singapore, stacked with the same neuron-filled chips…
Antibiotics are designed to wipe out infection-causing bacteria, but even a single course can leave a lasting mark on the gut microbiome, according to a new study of nearly 15,000 adults in Sweden. The research cross-referenced stool samples with Sweden’s prescribed drug registry to compare the gut microbiomes of people who had taken antibiotics at…
Seventy-five years ago, in the depths of a peat bog in Yorkshire, UK, archaeologists made a startling discovery: the perfectly preserved remains of dozens of 11,000-year-old mushrooms. Carefully cut and intentionally scorched, it is thought that these polypores were used by nomadic Mesolithic hunter-gatherers as tinder on their travels, acting as the earliest known portable…
