This decoration just about passes muster for Katie Andrii Oleksiienko/Shutterstock At this time of year, everything seems to be decorated with some kind of seasonal design – trees, holly, jolly Santas and so on. One shape you often see is a snowflake. Yes, they are beautiful and intricate, but I can find their proliferation deeply…
Microsoft’s Majorana 1 quantum chip John Brecher/Microsoft In February, Microsoft unveiled a new quantum computer called Majorana 1 and it quickly became one of the most controversial devices in quantum computing. Majorana 1 caused controversy because it relies on a particular kind of quantum bit, or qubit, called a topological qubit. Theoretically, these are a…
An illustration of an electron beam traveling through a niobium cavity, a key component of SLAC’s LCLS-II X-ray laser SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory The Klystron Gallery, a concrete hallway studded with evenly spaced metal cylinders, is long enough to extend past my line of sight. But as I stand inside it, I know that something…
A lot of this year’s health news was exhausting and demoralizing, as the Trump administration weakened scientific agencies and questioned public health and science itself. Deadly outbreaks of measles, bird flu, foodborne illness and infant botulism shone a light on the holes in our surveillance systems. “Backsliding” is the term I used to describe the…
Robbyant’s R1 cooks up a storm Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images This striking humanoid robot is the R1 from Robbyant, a company owned by Chinese tech giant Ant Group. The allure of humanoid robots is their versatility – you can imagine them doing any job that a human can, simply because they have the same…
December 29, 2025 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm 15 Million Years before the Megalodon, This Giant Ancient Shark Prowled the Oceans A humungous shark that lived 115 million years ago surpassed the size of modern-day great whites, paleontologists discovered By Claire Cameron edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Reinhard Dirscherl via Getty Images…
It happens every new year. Party time is over, and it is time to brace yourself for the predictable onslaught of health advice. Most of it will involve doing more of something that you already know is good for you. More exercise. More cooking from scratch. More wholesome, mindful hobbies. It is no wonder so…
CrushJames RiordonThe MIT Press, $40.25 Isaac Newton confessed that he had no idea what gravity was. The 17th century English polymath knew what it did, and he described it with a universal law of gravitation. But where the law came from, and why everything seemed to obey it, Newton could not say. More than 300…
December 29, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm China’s Plans for Humanlike AI Could Set the Tone for Global AI Rules Beijing is set to tighten China’s rules for humanlike artificial intelligence, with a heavy emphasis on user safety and societal values By Claire Cameron edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier China is…
The equations that govern fluids can be tricky to handle Vladimir Veljanovski / Alamy In 1900, mathematician David Hilbert presented his colleagues with a list of problems he believed both captured the present state of mathematics and the shape of its future. This year, 125 years later, Zaher Hani at the University of Michigan and…
