February 11, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm This ancient South American kingdom ran on bird poop Maize farmers in Peru’s Chincha Valley were fertilizing their crops with seabird poop as early as the year 1250 By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson The Isla Balletas is a guano-rich island south of…
The droppings of Peruvian pelicans and Peruvian boobies have been prized for hundreds of years Biljana Aljinovic/Alamy Powerful fertiliser based on seabird droppings may have fuelled the rise of a Peruvian agricultural kingdom 900 years ago and helped drive its eventual takeover by the Incas. Chemical analyses of ancient maize cobs from southern Peru show…
Some ancient fish in the Caribbean may have lost their lunch. Modern food chains on coral reefs off the coasts of the Dominican Republic and Panama are roughly 60 to 70 percent shorter than they were around 7,000 years ago, researchers report February 11 in Nature. Habitat loss and overfishing may have pushed more species to…
February 11, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm FDA won’t consider a new mRNA vaccine for flu despite the technology’s life-saving promise The U.S.’s drug safety agency declined to review a next-gen flu vaccine that uses the same tech as the coronavirus shots By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron An…
The gene therapy is administered as a mist that is inhaled Nico De Pasquale Photography/Getty Images A first-of-its-kind inhalable gene therapy for lung cancer that genetically modifies people’s lung cells has been fast-tracked towards potential approval after promising clinical trial results. “Very encouragingly, the hypothesis was proven – that there was actually shrinkage of the…
Two hundred and ninety million years ago, in a mountain valley within the central region of the supercontinent Pangaea, an apex predator snapped up at least three other animals and sometime later puked up the bones. That material hardened over the ages, and is now the oldest fossilized vomit ever discovered from a land-based ecosystem….
February 11, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm How ‘effectively zero-knowledge’ proofs could transform cryptography A new tool expands the ways people can prove they’ve solved a problem without revealing the solution By Peter Hall edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier In mathematics, proofs can be written down and shared. In cryptography, when…
I was so excited for my first job after university that even the physical assessment – required for my work as a field geologist – came with a certain thrill. That was until the doctor glanced at my chart and told me to lose 10 to 15 pounds. The proof, he said, was my body…
From skating to curling, the thrilling sports of the Winter Olympics have plenty of science behind them. Follow our coverage here to learn more. For at least a decade, the quadruple axel jump was figure skating’s white whale. “It’s been this unreachable thing, like the four-minute mile” once was, says Matthew Lind, a technical specialist…
Climate change has already led to more frequent disasters, such as the recent floods in Mozambique Associated Press/Alamy More than a decade on from the 2015 Paris climate conference, it is hard not to feel that we have, at best, been treading water on climate action. Sure, there are plenty more electric vehicles on the…
