The DNA cassette resembles music cassette tapes Jiankai Li et al. 2025 Retro cassette tapes may be making a comeback, with a DNA twist. While DNA has been used as an information storage medium before, researchers have now combined this with the convenience and look of a 1980s cassette tape, creating what they are calling…
September 10, 2025 2 min read Your Name Could Orbit the Moon with NASA’s Artemis II The public can submit names to travel along with four astronauts on an orbital journey to the moon next year By Clara Moskowitz edited by Dean Visser The Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft sit…
Acanceh in Mexico is home to many Maya people Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images In the past, the quantity of zinc and other trace elements in human diets was determined largely by levels in local soils. Now it has been shown that our ancestors evolved to cope with local variations in micronutrient levels…
Gravitational waves emitted after two black holes coalesced agree with theories from physicists Stephen Hawking and Roy Kerr.
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Imagine suddenly becoming allergic to a hamburger—or a steak or bacon or even certain cosmetics and medications. It’s happening to a growing number of people across the U.S. and around the world. And the culprit is a tiny tick bite. Alpha-gal syndrome is one of…
The brain holds space for a missing limb, even years after it’s gone. For three women who underwent planned hand amputations, brain scans revealed remarkably durable maps of hand areas, lasting for five years in one case. The results, published August 21 in Nature Neuroscience, counter the long-held idea that the adult brain remakes itself…
September 10, 2025 3 min read At the Peak of Hurricane Season, the Atlantic Is Quiet. Here’s Why Hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin is historically at its peak on September 10—but not this year By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson In May, as Atlantic hurricane season loomed, meteorologists worried that above-average tropical activity,…
Ian Burkhart was on holiday with friends in 2010 when his life changed forever. He dived into shallow water and broke his neck, leaving him paralysed from the shoulders down at the age of 19. “At that point, I was getting assistance with everything,” he says, “even being able to scratch an itch on my…
“Look up stock market prices and you might see the pattern…” Muhla1/Getty Images If you were to look at the front page of a newspaper, you would probably find that it contains lots of numbers: amounts of money, population sizes, measurements of length or area. If you pulled all those numbers out and put them…
Carved figure of a face from the Amiens-Renancourt 1 site in France Stephane Lancelot/Inrap A miniature statue dating back 27,000 years from northern France may give us clues to how ancient hunter-gatherers of the time styled their hair. The statuette was unearthed in 2021 from an open-air site about 140 kilometres north of Paris called…
