Harvester ants attack nest-mates whose scent they don’t recognise JorgeOrtiz_1976/Shutterstock Common air pollutants like ozone and nitric oxide can change the way ants smell, prompting their nest-mates to attack them as if they were intruders. Ants recognise their comrades by scent, and when they encounter an ant whose smell they don’t recognise, they respond aggressively,…
Say you lived in a country that has sky-high HPV vaccination coverage plus a uniform cervical cancer screening program. A new study suggests that, depending on when you got your shots, you might only need a few screenings in your lifetime. In this case, that country is Norway. Using a mathematical model, researchers found that…
NASA’s wet dress rehearsal—a crucial test of the agency’s Artemis II mission to the moon—hit a snag on Monday. Engineers had been fueling the mission’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant and planned to initiate a countdown sequence to simulate the launch. But hours into the process, NASA…
There might be a big clump of dark matter in our galactic neighbourhood Alamy There seems to be an enormous cloud of dark matter next to our solar system. We have never found one of these clouds in the Milky Way before, but precise cosmic clocks called pulsars finally made it possible. Our best cosmological…
Citations Y. Lin et al. Quantifying the population-level impact of insomnia on dementia among older adults in the United States. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A. Published online December 27, 2025. doi: 10.1093/gerona/glaf289. G. Mayer et al. Associations of sleep disorders with all-cause MCI/dementia and different types of dementia – clinical evidence, potential pathomechanisms and…
February 2, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Jupiter isn’t as huge as we thought it was “Textbooks will need to be updated”: the solar system’s largest planet appears to be smaller and flatter than we knew By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron Voyager’s “Blue Movie” of Jupiter. The solar…
An artist’s impression of Neanderthal life CHRISTIAN JEGOU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were probably interbreeding over a huge area stretching from western Europe into Asia. We have long known that early humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) interbred, which is why most non-African people today have some Neanderthal DNA, typically about 2…
Stinging clouds of tear gas explode from beneath a car full of children, forcing them to flee into the snowy street to seek air that’s safe to breathe. A man, face painted orange with pepper spray, is pinned to the icy ground by masked federal agents, unable to wipe the pain from his burning eyes….
February 2, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm 6 weird groundhog facts for Groundhog Day Groundhogs don’t really forecast the weather, but there are plenty of other strange things about these rodents By K. R. Callaway edited by Andrea Thompson Groundhogs are unique, and it’s not just because of their annual weather…
Less bitter grapefruit are now in development JeyMin/Imazins/Getty Images If you never eat grapefruit because you find them far too bitter, CRISPR varieties may be more to your taste. It has been shown that disabling one gene via gene editing can greatly reduce the level of the chemicals that make grapefruit so bitter. “It could…
