Living things produce “biophotons” Mike_shots/Shutterstock This year, scientists observed an eerie glow emanating from mice that disappears after death, reminiscent of paranormal ideas of a bodily aura. The discovery led to a flurry of interest in the underlying science of biophotons. Biophotons are ultraweak particles of light that are produced by structures in living cells…
Not so futuristic: Saruman with a palantir in The Lord of the Rings LANDMARK MEDIA/Alamy We are approaching the Gregorian New Year, and it’s a great time to ponder what’s coming next. Are we about to use CRISPR to grow wings? Will we all be uploading our brains to the Amazon cloud? Should we wrap…
December 25, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm 6 Otherworldly Deep-Sea Images from 2025 From the first sighting of a colossal squid in the wild to a seriously goofy octopus, 2025 delivered some astounding photos from the ocean’s depths By Andrea Thompson edited by Jeanna Bryner The mystery mollusk Bathydevius caudactylus observed…
Zavacephale rinpoche Masaya Hattori If there’s ever a creature you would not want to bump heads with, it is Zavacephale rinpoche. This dome-headed dinosaur found in Mongolia lived 108 million years ago, making it the oldest of its kind ever discovered. When palaeontologists first saw the fossil skull protruding from the ground, they described it…
December 25, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Bizarre Ecosystem Discovered More Than Two Miles beneath Arctic Ocean Dynamic mounds made of methane at a depth of some 3,640 meters act like “frozen reefs” for a bizarre array of deep-sea creatures, new observations reveal By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner UiT…
The 3D-printed microscope Dr Liam M. Rooney/University of Strathclyde At the beginning of 2025, a preprint of a paper about a new microscope caused an awful lot of excitement among researchers. It was the world’s first fully 3D-printed microscope, made in only a few hours and for a fraction of the typical cost. Liam Rooney…
The Denisovan skull Hebei GEO University In 2010, DNA analysis of a finger bone around 40,000 years old revealed that it came from a previously unknown group of ancient humans, dubbed the Denisovans after the cave in Siberia where the bone was found. But with no skulls, we had no idea what they looked like….
Dark photons offer a new explanation for the double-slit experiment RUSSELL KIGHTLEY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A core tenet of quantum theory was imperilled this year when a team of researchers put forward a radical new interpretation of an experiment about the nature of light. At the centre of the new work was the double-slit experiment, which…
December 24, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Watch Scientific American’s Favorite Science Videos of 2025 On TikTok and other short-form video platforms, Scientific American explored the underground labs of Greenland, brand-new colors and the perfect way to make eggs By Carin Leong edited by Andrea Thompson From mind-bending discoveries to playful…
Uranus’s new moon, S/2025 U1, was spotted using the James Webb Space Telescope NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/M. El Moutamid (SwRI)/M. Hedman (University of Idaho) This year, astronomers discovered more than 100 previously unknown moons in our own solar system. There may be many more yet to be discovered, and cataloguing them could help us better understand how planets…
