NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University) A few years ago, the internet caught alight with talk of a “vibe shift” in what counts as cool. Skinny jeans and minimalism were out; baggy trousers and messy hair were in. Cue a minor panic for ageing…
Celebrate Pi Day and read about how this number pops up across math and science on our special Pi Day page. For more than two millennia, mathematicians have produced a growing heap of pi equations in their ongoing search for methods to calculate pi faster and faster. The pile of equations has now grown into…
Is there anyone out there? NASA/SDO We may have been missing signals from intelligent aliens because of solar wind. Researchers from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute say this means we have been watching for the wrong type of signal, potentially failing to spot promising evidence of extraterrestrial life, but the chances of a…
[CLIP: Theme music] Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. Last February, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was sworn in as the U.S. secretary of health and human services. The HHS, which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is effectively…
Are the days of handwritten mathematics coming to an end? Laborant / Alamy In March 2025, mathematician Daniel Litt made a bet. Despite the march of progress of artificial intelligence in many fields, he believed his subject was safe, wagering with a colleague that there was only a 25 per cent chance an AI could…
March 13, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Raccoons will solve puzzles just for fun Raccoons might want to break into your trash can even without delicious leftovers inside By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson A raccoon interacts with a lock hanging off one side of the multiaccess puzzle box used…
The globular cluster NGC 1850 lies inside the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way Copyright: NASA, ESA and P. Goudfrooij (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) When is a collection of stars just a collection of stars and when is it a galaxy? This sounds like…
March 13, 2026 5 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Have astronomers found a runaway monster black hole or just a very weird galaxy? Despite years of debate and follow-up studies, an odd streak of cosmic light still defies a final explanation. Is it a giant black hole screaming through intergalactic space? By Phil…
“The Whippet”, as imagined by the New Scientist picture desk NASA/muratart/Shutterstock/Adobe Stock A sudden, mysterious burst of bright light in the sky could be from a black hole devouring a vast, unusually bare star. In 2018, astronomers spotted a new kind of cosmic explosion that became brighter more quickly than any other. The flash, called…
March 13, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Earth’s spin is slowing at an unprecedented rate, thanks to climate change Rising sea levels are slowing Earth’s rotation, lengthening days by 1.33 milliseconds per century By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner the_burtons via Getty Images Rising sea levels are slowing Earth’s rotation,…
