Mars was once much wetter NASA/USGS Geological features on Mars suggest the planet once boasted rivers and broad coastlines around a vast ocean. The discovery provides the most direct evidence yet for the Red Planet’s former blue vistas. “The presence of liquid water [on Mars] is a broad topic that includes rains, rivers, lakes, as…
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. The French philosopher and scientist René Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” What he was getting at, in part, is that though our senses might deceive us, the act of thinking was proof of our own existence. But reflect…
Christopher Michel/Contour RA by Getty Images Civilisations name their ages after materials. In school, we learn about the Stone Age, the Bronze Age – and we are currently in a silicon age characterised by computers and phones. What might define the next age? Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks a family of…
January 22, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Parents might age faster or slower based on how many kids they have A new study found that women in Finland who had a lot of kids—or none—aged faster than those with one or a few kids. But the findings don’t necessarily translate to…
Vaccine uptake is critical for public health Robin Utrecht/Shutterstock When I read the 1998 study falsely claiming there was a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, I was shocked. Shocked by how bad the paper was, shocked that it was published in a high-status journal and shocked that journalists reported…
January 27, 2026 1 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm AI reveals 800 never-before-seen ‘cosmic anomalies’ in old Hubble images Scientists analyzed more than 100 million image cutouts from a Hubble Space Telescope archive and found hundreds of previously undiscovered objects By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron Six previously undiscovered astrophysical objects…
Vast areas of the Amazon rainforest have been burned for cattle ranching MICHAEL DANTAS/AFP via Getty Images Deforestation has reduced rainfall over the Amazon, suggesting the rainforest could reach a catastrophic tipping point sooner than expected. Satellite observations and rain gauge measurements show that the amount of rain falling in the southern Amazon basin declined…
January 27, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm NASA pushes ahead with ‘wet’ dress rehearsal for Artemis II moon mission A crucial test of NASA’s upcoming crewed flight to the moon is set to take place as soon as Saturday, the agency said By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron NASA’s…
The brain responds after a heart attack Science Photo Library / Alamy Following a heart attack, the brain picks up and acts on signals that come directly from sensory neurons located in the heart. The discovery suggests there is a feedback loop, which involves the immune system as well as the brain, that has an…
After a heart attack, the heart “talks” to the brain. And that conversation may make recovery worse. Shutting down nerve cells that send messages from injured heart cells to the brain boosted the heart’s ability to pump and decreased scarring, experiments in mice show. Targeting inflammation in a part of the nervous system where those…
