A periodic table of highly charged ions Chunhai Lyu et al. (2025) A new version of the periodic table of elements has predicted hundreds of highly charged ions that could be used to create the next generation of optical atomic clocks. The periodic table, first invented by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, groups the 118 known…
Warren Loeppky has been a pediatric dentist in the Canadian city of Calgary for 20 years. Over the last decade, he says, tooth decay in children he’s seen has become more common, more aggressive and more severe. Many of his young patients have so much damage that he has to work with them under general…
Bird Migration Is Peaking in the U.S.—Here’s How to Watch The spectacle of spring bird migration is in full swing, and you can get in on the action By Kate Wong edited by Jeanna Bryner A male Blackburnian warbler (Setophaga fusca) singing a territorial song. George Grall/Alamy Stock Photo The spring migration of birds from…
For over a decade, floating cranes have been lowering a strange cargo some 3000 metres under the Mediterranean Sea. The objects look otherworldly: large, shiny spheres crammed with electronics. They are, in fact, detectors for a machine called KM3NeT, designed to search for one of the most mysterious fundamental particles. The machine is still several…
Scientists aboard a research vessel near Los Angeles collected ash, air and water samples as fire blazed on the hills before them in January.
Trump’s NOAA Has Downplayed an Alarming Finding: CO₂ Surged Last Year Under the Trump administration, NOAA has minimized an announcement that climate-warming carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere grew at a record-breaking speed in 2024 By Chelsea Harvey & E&E News Volumetric visualization of the total carbon dioxide (CO₂) on a global scale added on…
Hominins have been using fire for various reasons for at least 1 million years SHEILA TERRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Mastering fire may have also led to genetic changes that helped early humans survive mild burn injuries, but this evolutionary trait could complicate the treatment of more severe cases today. An early-stage study suggests that the selection…
WASHINGTON — When traces of H5N1 bird flu showed up in cow’s milk last year, it raised fears that the virus could become more infectious to humans. So far, that hasn’t happened, virologist Richard Webby reported April 23 at the World Vaccine Congress Washington. Cows were surprise hosts for the virus. Influenza viruses latch on…
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. I was out of the office taking a little break last week, so I didn’t have the chance to write and record our usual news roundup. Instead, I thought it would be fun to dive back into the Scientific American archives for…
Tabular icebergs are breaking away from the ice shelves of Antarctica James Kirkham City-sized icebergs once drifted past the coast of Britain when ice sheets covering much of northern Europe were in rapid retreat about 18,000 to 20,000 years ago. James Kirkham at the British Antarctic Survey and his colleagues have found the preserved scour…
