Category Science

Tourists try to cool off in Rome, where a large increase in heat deaths is expected by 2099 Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images There will be an extra 2.3 million temperature-related deaths in Europe’s main cities by 2099 without more…

In late 2022 large-language-model AI arrived in public, and within months they began misbehaving. Most famously, Microsoft’s “Sydney” chatbot threatened to kill an Australian philosophy professor, unleash a deadly virus and steal nuclear codes. AI developers, including Microsoft and OpenAI,…

The incoming president signed a suite of executive orders last week YURI GRIPAS/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock In the first week of his second term, US President Donald Trump has thrown the country’s scientific apparatus into chaos, while at the same time anointing a…

Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners. For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week by catching up on some of the latest science news. [CLIP: “None of My Business,” by Arthur Benson] Feltman: First, we’ve got…

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Far from being solo operators, most single-celled microbes are in complex relationships. In the ocean, the soil, and your gut, they might battle and eat each other, exchange DNA, compete…

The scene that unfolded on a cold November day in central Illinois might seem commonplace, but it was part of a bold plan to pull billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stuff it into the ocean.…

As soon as a star is born, it starts fighting a battle with gravity. A burning star constantly releases enough energy to counteract gravity’s inward pressure. But once its fuel runs out, gravity wins: the star implodes, and most of…

January 21, 2025 4 min read Contributors to Scientific American’s February 2025 Issue Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories By Allison Parshall edited by Jen Schwartz Mark RossA New Understanding of the Cell Where Mark…

January 21, 2025 2 min read Book Review: The Secret to Why Stories Endure through Generations Storytelling is part of being human. In this nonfiction book, we learn why and how such narratives can also be a trap By Elizabeth…

January 21, 2025 3 min read Mysterious Blobs, Green Monsters and the Space Junk Crisis Our February issue covers new Alzheimer’s guidelines, teens’ transcendent thinking, Neandertal DNA in all of us, and more By Jeanna Bryner Scientific American, February 2025…