Scientific American Content: Global

The secret Cold War history of Tetris

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The beloved game arose out of the opposing forces of the U.S. and the Soviet Union

How a horse flu crisis fueled animals rights advocacy in the U.S.

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000

In 1872, New York’s devastating epizootic gave the ASPCA’s young founder a powerful moral argument for animal protection

How the body’s own immune system can attack the brain

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Antibodies made by the immune system can sometimes target human brain cells, producing psychiatric symptoms. Researchers aim to better identify such rare cases as well as fine-tune treatments.

Scientists just found a bizarre cosmic object ‘hiding in plain sight’

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Meet the Milky Way’s first microblazar

2026 could be the turning point on climate action, Al Gore says

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 16:04:00 +0000

The former vice president thinks this year is when we’ll get serious about climate change

Why Hawaii is facing an unprecedented hurricane season

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:02:00 +0000

Hawaii has never had three hurricanes come within 50 miles in the same year

Jupiter-bound spacecraft Juice to fly by Earth Monday

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

To get to the outer solar system, the Juice spacecraft needs an assist from Earth’s gravity—and it’s going to be taking pictures along the way

What’s the point of the interstellar Fermi Explorer mission?

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:45:00 +0000

Fermi Explorer, a proposed low-cost private mission to Alpha Centauri, seeks to address a question that’s already been answered

Vox’s Unexplainable and Scientific American explore the mystery of dark matter and the limits of science

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

What if the universe’s biggest mystery has no answer?

Trump’s FDA nominee Heidi Overton affirms MMR vaccine and mifepristone are safe at crucial Senate hearing

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Heidi Overton also said at the hearing on Thursday that Tylenol does not cause autism

Diesel fuel prices are rising—chemistry can help explain why

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 14:45:00 +0000

Diesel prices have almost doubled over the past year, spelling trouble for farmers, truckers and the entire U.S. economy

OpenAI’s agent hacking Australia is a warning for governments everywhere

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 14:45:00 +0000

In what appears to be a first, an OpenAI agent secretly accessed Australian government health care records during an internal test

AI solves 79-year-old math mystery of six-dimensional spheres

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Can a six-dimensional sphere be described using imaginary numbers? For decades, experts puzzled over this question. Now an AI has apparently answered it

China’s open AI models are testing America’s approach to AI safety

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

With Donald Trump and Xi Jinping set to discuss AI safety, the growing popularity of Chinese open-weight models highlights the limits of developer-controlled safeguards

Blood test for multiple cancers clears crucial hurdle on track to FDA approval

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 23:08:00 +0000

If approved, the test could help catch cancers early—but more research is still needed, experts say

See the Taurids light up the fall sky with brilliant shooting stars

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 19:37:00 +0000

Lasting from mid-September until mid-November, the Taurid meteor showers are among the longest of the year

Watch a robot dog run a marathon faster than the average human

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

The quadrupedal machine finished the course in a solid four hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds—and on just one battery charge

When it comes to ‘poop maxxing,’ are you optimizing or obsessing?

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Is it possible to optimize our poop?

Is football too dangerous for kids’ brains? These scientists are racing to find out

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

A new study found that one in four professional football players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE—a degenerative brain disease—but what about children who play these sports?

Scientists discover largest new impact crater in the solar system ever—on our moon

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:00:00 +0000

The crater, named after geologist and lunar surface expert Tom McGetchin, spans more than two football fields wide

Why mathematicians are hiding research results in zero-knowledge proofs

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Google made a major breakthrough in quantum computing. To prevent the results from being misused, the company kept them secret. That backfired

Trump rejects AI regulation, citing parallels with climate change, in U.N. address

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:00:00 +0000

The president also said artificial intelligence should be rebranded as “super intelligence”

RFK, Jr., is focusing attention on electromagnetic fields. Here’s what the science says about exposure

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

The research into how electromagnetic waves and radio frequency radiation influence health has been plagued by low-quality studies

This year’s El Niño just broke another sobering record

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 14:20:00 +0000

“This is probably going to be the superlative El Niño event of our lives so far,” a climate scientist says

NASA Goddard’s shrinking workforce could stifle future space missions, experts say

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

2025 was a brutal year of budget cuts and workforce attrition at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the home base for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Experts worry Goddard—and NASA’s space science—may never recover

Mathematicians use AI to find mysterious symmetries, solving decades-old problem

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

In parallel, a race by amateurs and mathematicians has found all 25,000 cases of one “inverse Galois problem”

Mathematician reveals the truth behind the Parthenon’s optical illusion

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Parthenon sits atop a platform that is curved into a subtle hill shape that some say makes the structure appear straighter—but is that true?

What a Trump order to put political appointees in charge of NIH funding would mean for science

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 19:58:00 +0000

Advocates and scientists warn that giving political appointees power over research grants would “upend” U.S. science

Did OpenAI solve the wrong Navier-Stokes problem?

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:00:00 +0000

OpenAI’s proof seems eligible for a $1-million prize—but only by using a controversial loophole

9 ‘boundaries’ keep Earth livable. We’ve breached 7 of them

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:05:00 +0000

Earth’s annual checkup shows that we’re at increasing risk of moving away from the environment we’re adapted to

COVID cases are on the rise—here’s how to stay healthy this winter

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

The virus is currently most prevalent in California and the southern U.S., but experts expect it to go national in the coming weeks

Space weapons, AI safety concerns and the EPA’s rollback of power plant emission rules

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

From orbital weapons to AI risks and weaker emissions rules

Why human language may be intertwined with fire

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Understanding how human language evolved is one of the hardest problems in science to unpick

Could brain-inspired computers run on the same amount of power as a human brain?

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The human brain uses about the same amount of wattage as a lightbulb

Why AI is speeding up scientific research but not lab experiments

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:20:00 +0000

A new report from Google, Google DeepMind and M.I.T. finds that researchers are using AI—a lot. It’s just not helping as much in the lab

What does OpenAI’s blockbuster mathematics proof mean for the real world?

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

OpenAI’s claimed proof of the Navier-Stokes problem is a mathematical tour de force, but any real-world applications may be years away—if they ever arrive at all

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope glimpses its first cosmic light

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:45:00 +0000

The space telescope is set to reveal thousands of new exoplanets and scour the universe for signs of dark matter and energy

What changing ‘Lake Ontario’ to ‘Lake America’ means for weather forecasts

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:38:00 +0000

The National Weather Service is speeding ahead with changing the name of the Great Lake

This dolphin terrifies fish until they puke—and then eats it

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Don’t have the energy to catch your own meal? This dolphin has a gross solution

How much longer will the sun shine?

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:45:00 +0000

Our sun is on a long, strange trip to its eventual demise. Here are the key stops along the way

How heat makes it harder for students to learn

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:30:00 +0000

As temperatures rise, the evidence is clear that heat is eroding students’ ability to learn

Why Bangladesh’s measles outbreak is a cautionary tale for the U.S.

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

As Bangladesh faces a deadly measles outbreak, experts assess what it would take for the U.S. to reach similar levels

Indonesia is moving its capital. Will a forest pay the price?

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Filmmaker and journalist Leah Varjacques takes listeners inside an Indonesian forest that’s quickly changing as the country attempts to move its capital city

See the first new species of cat discovered in more than a century—it’s adorable

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 19:00:00 +0000

The cat is smaller than a house cat but has the spots of a leopard

North Korea’s nuclear tests have turned this mountain into an earthquake hot spot

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Seismic activity has increased markedly at Mount Mantap, also known as Mantapsan, since the last test blast there in 2017

What your dog really thinks about you

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:15:00 +0000

Science is helping to peel back the layers of how dogs process the world around them

What eyewitness accounts tell us about the science of memory

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The malleability of memory once cast doubt on eyewitness identification in criminal cases, but new research reveals how eyewitness memory can be used accurately

Can independent AI auditors keep up with frontier AI development?

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Independent auditors are emerging as a key part of plans to rein in frontier AI. But the systems are evolving faster than the methods used to evaluate them

OpenAI cracks the hidden math that keeps your texts from turning to gibberish

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:30:00 +0000

The surprising real-world applications of high-dimensional sphere packing and the 48-year-old barrier that OpenAI just broke

AI labs are claiming “AGI” is imminent—but does that mean what we think it means?

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Artificial general intelligence was once a term confined to technical science papers, but its meaning has slipped