3I/ATLAS is pretty strange International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Bolin The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS contains water and carbon molecules at levels never before seen in our solar system. This suggests that it formed around an alien star radically different from and much older than the sun. Astronomers have been tracking 3I/ATLAS since it entered our solar system…
March 16, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Landmark offshore wind farms come online in the U.S. Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind are two of several wind farm projects that have come under fire from the Trump administration in recent months By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron An operational wind…
An artist’s impression of how Visigoth warriors may have looked in the 5th century The Creative Assembly (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) The Goths were a multi-ethnic society, according to a study of DNA from Gothic graves. The people buried there had ancestry from places as far afield as Scandinavia, modern-day Turkey and North Africa. The findings…
March 16, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm What’s with all the wild weather this week? From blizzard conditions in the Midwest to a heat wave in the western U.S. to flooding in Hawaii, March has brought wild weather to the country By Andrea Thompson edited by Claire Cameron A low-pressure system…
From left to right: Rachel Coldicutt, David Leslie, Rumman Chowdhury, Noura Al Moubayed and Wendy Hall Royal Society/Debbie Rowe It’s day two of the Women and the future of science conference at the Royal Society in London, but I’m finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on the speakers because my AI transcription software – which…
March 16, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Judge temporarily blocks key parts of RFK, Jr.’s effort to overhaul U.S. childhood vaccines A federal judge on Monday issued a stay on the CDC’s move to reduce the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccines By Claire Cameron edited by Tanya Lewis Photo by…
Extreme heat in 2023 fuelled devastating wildfires in Greece SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP via Getty Images Temperatures over the past three years have been even higher than expected, provoking a debate among scientists. Almost everyone agrees that global warming has accelerated. But some researchers say it is speeding up even more than climate models show, while others…
During hot weather, daily activities such as walking and gardening can become dangerous. Such obstructive heat has become much more common around the world, researchers report March 10 in Environmental Research: Health. Using global heat, humidity and demographic data, scientists found that sweltry conditions now limit light physical activity for adults ages 18 to 40…
March 16, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Crabs are cannibalizing one another with surprising rapacity in parts of the Chesapeake Bay A 37-year study in the Chesapeake Bay revealed that a major predator of young blue crabs might be their own kind By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron A…
Ryugu is an asteroid that sometimes passes close to Earth JAXA All five of the main ingredients for DNA and RNA have been found in samples from the asteroid Ryugu. This strengthens the idea that asteroids may have brought the ingredients for the first living organisms to Earth long ago. Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft visited…
