John Glenn during the fiery re-entry NASA/Andy Saunders ON 20 February 1962, NASA astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, but there were signs of trouble. As Glenn’s Friendship 7 spacecraft returned from its historic flight, a warning light indicated its heat shield had unlatched, risking complete incineration. This image (above) captures…
“Find the moon and watch it darken and redden…” JG Photography/Alamy My feelings about the moon changed in the past year, when I gave birth on the day of not just a full moon, but a Harvest Moon. For the first few months of my son’s life, the passing of time felt very strange –…
Rattling departures of high-ranking officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appear to be sending the U.S. public health agency into unsettling disarray, experts say, after the White House abruptly dismissed CDC director Susan Monarez on Wednesday evening following alleged disagreements on vaccine and health policies. In a post on the social media…
Rock strata, like these in Canada, can help us piece together the deep past Paul Andreassen/Alamy StrataLaura Poppick (W.W. Norton) The story of Earth is the story of change. The 4.5 billion years of this planet’s history saw it transformed from a hellish world of magma oceans and poisonous air to a temperate, habitable home…
August 29, 2025 4 min read Voting Integrity Messages Fight Misinformation in the Lab. But What about the Real World? Telling people exactly how voting security works helps defeat election misinformation, experiments suggest. But outside experts question how well that works in the real world By Dan Vergano edited by Jeanna Bryner People cast their…
The Dispossessed takes place on the twin worlds of Anarres and Urras Naeblys/Alamy There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared; an adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it…
Aaron Lauda has been exploring an area of mathematics that most physicists have seen little use for, wondering if it might have practical applications. In a twist even he didn’t expect, it turns out that this kind of math could be the key to overcoming a long-standing obstacle in quantum computing—and maybe even for understanding…
Ursula K. Le Guin in 2005 Dan Tuffs/Getty Images When I’m asked by a Le Guin neophyte where to start, I rarely recommend The Dispossessed. I wouldn’t urge a stranger to leap into the deep end of a pool. Though the novel delicately explores matters of the heart, it is heady – in the sense…
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina became one of the deadliest storms ever to hit the U.S. After sweeping along the Gulf Coast, wreaking havoc in Louisiana and Mississippi, the massive storm ultimately led to 1,392 fatalities, according to the National Hurricane Center. Katrina’s destruction centered…
The New Scientist Book Club has been reading Circular Motion by Alex Foster The New Scientist Book Club made a jump backwards through time for our latest read, Alex Foster’s Circular Motion, moving from the millennia-ahead future of Adam Roberts’s Lake of Darkness to a world that doesn’t feel so very far from our own….
