Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. In July of 2020, NASA engineers sent a rover named Perseverance hurtling into space. And in pictures it kind of looked like the diminutive robot in the Disney-Pixar film WALL-E—just much, much larger. On supporting science journalism If you’re enjoying this…
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more The year in daft Being a New Scientist reader, you are probably savvy enough to realise that end-of-year roundups are written weeks ahead of time. This particular summation was drafted on 1 December, just as Feedback was preparing to spend…
When danger approaches, many creatures seem to follow the ancient proverb that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Researchers have recently been finding subtle ways that animals communicate with other species in this kind of cooperative defense pact. For example, a recent study in Nature Ecology & Evolution documented more than 20 bird…
Elon Musk helped the US government take a chainsaw to science funding Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg via Getty Images One of the most enduring images of 2025 is the picture of billionaire Elon Musk, at the time serving as a special adviser to the administration of US President Donald Trump, wielding a shiny, red chainsaw as…
December 10, 2025 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Ancient Humans Were Making Fire 350,000 Years Earlier Than Scientists Realized Making fire on demand was a milestone in the lives of our early ancestors. But the question of when that skill first arose has been difficult for scientists to pin down By Meghan…
Comet Lemmon, photographed from northern Italy on 26th October 2025 Marcel Clemens/Alamy I don’t think anyone declared it, but 2025 was a big year for comets. There was comet Lemmon, which was discovered in January and stayed in the news for a good nine months. The images of Lemmon’s long and beautiful tail, created by…
December 10, 2025 1 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm A Deadly Coronavirus Resurfaces in France for First Time in 12 Years French health officials are trying to trace all the contacts of two men who contracted MERS, a potentially lethal disease that is typically confined to the Middle East By Claire Cameron edited…
Reconstruction of the city of Wroxeter in Roman Britain Ivan Lapper/English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images The health of populations in Britain declined under Roman occupation, particularly in more urban areas. There is a widely held belief that the Romans brought civilisation and its many benefits to those they conquered, perhaps best exemplified in Monty Python’s Life of…
Mosaics can enchant humans with gestalt beauty, but for many other creatures, their worth transcends aesthetics. Repeating patterns of tilelike motifs adorn insect eyes, shark mouths, sunflower heads and many other organisms, providing a diverse array of benefits, researchers report in the November PNAS Nexus. “These surface designs exist on literally all scales,” says biologist…
December 10, 2025 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Scientists Explain How mRNA COVID Vaccines May Rarely Cause Myocarditis A new study identifies a mechanism for how COVID vaccines may, in infrequent cases, drive heart inflammation, a condition that can be caused by the disease itself By Lauren J. Young edited by Tanya…
