Category Science

CLIMATEWIRE | Lawmakers and officials from Western states are warning that President Donald Trump’s firings and funding freezes will leave the region woefully unprepared for the coming wildfire season, just two months after blazes ravaged Los Angeles. The new administration’s…

Theoretical calculation of the energy levels of electrons in twisted layers of graphene in a magnetic field, showing the fractal “butterfly” pattern predicted by Douglas Hofstadter Yazdani Lab, Princeton University A fractal butterfly pattern produced by an unusual configuration of…

NASA wants to get out of the space station business and put it in the hands of, well, businesses. The agency is planning to send the International Space Station (ISS) to a fiery death through Earth’s atmosphere in 2031 so…

Technology may be wrongly blamed for poor sleep Cavan Images/Getty Images Much has been written about how modern lifestyles mean we are no longer getting enough sleep, unlike our ancestors who lived in less technologically advanced times. But an analysis…

A dark horse has entered the Trump administration’s backward-running race to botch humanity’s response to climate change: the Pentagon. And the agency might just win simply by decreeing climate change unreal and “woke.” This would almost be amusing if it…

A 3400-kilometre-wide thunderstorm on Jupiter Shawn R. Brueshaber et al. 2025 A thunderstorm that raged in Jupiter’s atmosphere for weeks was fortuitously captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, giving astronomers the most detailed look ever at a storm on the gas…

[CLIP: Theme music] Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’ve probably heard of space telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb. They’re famous for giving us breathtaking images of the cosmos and providing countless people around…

An artist’s impression of the Athena spacecraft on the moon NASA A private space mission will launch to the moon this week, aiming for the southern-most point ever visited on the lunar surface. The Athena spacecraft, made by US-based Intuitive…

Few voters likely expected President Donald Trump in the first weeks of his administration to slash billions of dollars from the nation’s premier federal cancer research agency. But funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health were presaged in Project…

Pere Santamaria was 15 when he developed myasthenia gravis. This autoimmune condition causes extreme muscle weakness and can sometimes lead to breathing difficulties. In Santamaria’s case, it affected the ocular muscles controlling his vision, making him see double. “It had a…