Movie night might mean more than you think South_agency/Getty Images Strangers are more likely to become friends if their brains respond similarly to movie clips, suggesting neural activity can predict relationships. Across cultures, humans tend to surround themselves with like-minded people. This phenomenon, known as homophily, explains why past studies have found neural similarities amongst…
In astronomy, 180 years is a very long time—maybe not for the goings-on in the universe but certainly for our understanding of it. When Scientific American published its very first issue 180 years ago this month, our view of the cosmos was substantively different. We had no idea of the scale of the universe or…
Quickly detecting a lone electron is a difficult task agsandrew/Shutterstock We can now detect single electrons with the resolution of a few trillionths of a second, and this could prove essential for building a new generation of quantum electronic devices. Traditional electronic circuits are filled with many electrons, but interactions between these particles often diminish…
August 15, 2025 3 min read First 3D Images of Human Embryo Implantation Reveal New Details of the Process Analyzing embryo movements in uteruslike environments could offer clues to improving the success rate of in vitro fertilization By Humberto Basilio edited by Lauren J. Young Confocal microscopy image of a nine-day-old human embryo. Specific proteins…
Stromatolites are rock-like structures formed by bacteria in shallow water lkonya/Shutterstock Microbes from a remote bay in Western Australia seem to connect to each other with tiny tubes, forming a relationship that may reflect an early step in the evolution of complex life. In Shark Bay, or Gathaagudu in the Indigenous Malgana language, microbes form slimy…
Starting at least 2.6 million years ago, East African toolmakers became tech-savvy road warriors. Those hominids, perhaps early members of the Homo genus or a dead-end lineage dubbed Paranthropus, traveled up to 13 kilometers from a lakeshore site to obtain and bring back rocks suitable for fashioning into durable stone tools. The finding pushes back…
Every time a new slang word gets coined on the Internet, linguist Adam Aleksic is thrilled. “It’s definitely good for me in that I stay in business,” says Aleksic, who studies the origins of words and the changes they undergo through time, particularly online. As the “Etymology Nerd,” Aleksic posts videos that document this ever…
Can we broadcast quantum information? Weiquan Lin/Getty Images Sharing quantum information the same way we broadcast TV or radio programs may be impractical – even for mathematical schemes that sidestep the limitations posed by quantum physics. We have long known that quantum copy machines could never exist because the laws of quantum physics forbid any…
Will Nediger, a crossword constructor and Ph.D. in linguistics, edited this puzzle. Looking for answers? Go to sciencenews.org/puzzle-answers. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email us at puzzles@sciencenews.org.
For months, researchers in a laboratory in Dallas, Texas, worked in secrecy, culturing grey-wolf blood cells and altering the DNA within. The scientists then plucked nuclei from these gene-edited cells and injected them into egg cells from a domestic dog to form clones. They transferred dozens of the cloned embryos into the wombs of surrogate…
