Ryan Wills for New Scientist/Adobe Stock Rushing to get to work in the morning, we grab our coat, bag and keys and – invariably – steal a glance at the clock to check that we are running on time. The passing of time is so integral to our day-to-day lives that we can’t afford to…
January 26, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89 A leader in the global fight against smallpox and a champion of vaccine science, William Foege died last Saturday By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron The late physicians and health administrators William Foege…
The dark matter distribution observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and by the James Webb Space Telescope (right) Dr Gavin Leroy/Professor Richard Massey/COSMOS-Webb collaboration Scientists have created the best ever map of dark matter using subtle distortions in the shape of about 250,000 galaxies. It could help us understand some of the biggest mysteries…
January 26, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Why freezing rain can be so much more dangerous than snow Freezing rain can cause ice to accumulate on tree branches and power lines and thus poses a greater risk than snow By Andrea Thompson edited by Claire Cameron Ice hangs from power lines…
Artist’s reconstruction of a Palaeolithic woman making a digging stick from an alder tree trunk G. Prieto; K. Harvati The oldest known wooden tools have been found in an opencast mine in Greece. They are 430,000 years old and were made by an unidentified species of ancient human – perhaps the ancestors of Neanderthals. Prehistoric…
A digging stick and a tiny tool of unknown purpose are among the oldest handheld wooden tools ever found. The objects, from 430,000 years ago, indicate early human ancestors were using wood for tools, weapons and maybe shelters. Our team was “so lucky, incredibly lucky” to have found objects like this, says paleolithic archaeologist Annemieke…
In February 2007 the Supreme Court heard a case that hinged on about 15 minutes of video evidence from two police vehicles’ dashboard cameras: footage showed the front end of a police car as it pursued a driver in Georgia before it rammed into the back of the driver’s car, which subsequently crashed. The driver,…
Menstrual pads can non-invasively collect information on a woman’s fertility Shutterstock/Connect world An at-home test built into a menstrual pad could help women track their fertility using their period blood, offering a non-invasive way to monitor changes over time, without the need for repeated blood tests or clinic visits. For many women, their fertility remains…
Southern elephant seal pups were among the first to die when a deadly strain of avian influenza arrived in the Crozet Islands in 2024. But as the virus spread across the sub-Antarctic archipelago, a handful of penguin chicks had a potential advantage: They’d gotten a flu shot. Disease ecologist Thierry Boulinier and his colleagues were…
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup. First, we have an update on humans going back to the moon. In the coming weeks the first launch window will open for NASA’s Artemis II mission. The planned lunar flyby will be…
