Science

Every story is a science story, even the ones that sound more like science fiction. This year Scientific American introduced readers to real discoveries that sounded a bit like science-fiction, such as the crime rings trafficking sand around the world and the physicists searching for evidence of “negative time.” The U.S. government’s former UFO hunter […]

Should you throw out your black plastic spatula? A recent study that reported alarming levels of several flame retardants in common black-colored plastic items (including cooking utensils, toys and hair products) had many people suddenly taking stock of their inky array of plastic kitchenware and considering wood or metal alternatives. And the reasons for the

Humans have been speaking some form of language for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years. Yet linguists, psychologists and historians are constantly making new discoveries about the ways we communicate with one another. Linguists are tracking the new terms we invent for our modern lives while archeologists search for the lost history of

This past summer, I and many others around the world watched in horror as wildfires reduced nearly a third of the town of Jasper, Alberta, to ashes and incinerated some 150 square miles of the surrounding Jasper National Park. Although I now live and work in Tucson, Ariz., the devastation still felt personal: Jasper is

Should I tell my friend their boyfriend is cheating on them? Should I intervene when I hear an off-color joke? When faced with moral questions—situations where the course of action relates to our sense of right and wrong—we often seek advice. And now people can turn to ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) for

December 18, 2024 5 min read How to Manage Holiday Grief in Yourself and Others The holidays can be a difficult time for people who are grieving. Here’s how to get through it or support a loved one By J. Kim Penberthy & The Conversation US The holidays can be an especially difficult time for

December 18, 2024 5 min read The Public Distrusts Scientists’ Morals, Not Their Science Reaction to a recent Pew survey on the public’s trust in science shows that the scientific community is not ready to address the real problem By John H. Evans Our overlapping Trump and COVID eras have seen a fairly sharp downturn

Rachel Feltman: I want you to do something for me. Close your eyes. I’m going to say a word, and I’d like you to, as quickly as you can, come up with a mental image to go with it. The word is “conservationist.” Okay, so what did you picture? (If you were able to come

December 17, 2024 3 min read Hear How Baby Humpback Whales Burp and Bark to Beg for Food The burps, barks and snorts humpback whales make when asking their mother for milk are the first recorded instances of begginglike behavior in a baleen whale By Jack Tamisiea Aerial view of a humpback whale mother-calf pair

People tend to have the sense that their inner thoughts and feelings are much richer than what they are capable of expressing in real time. Elon Musk has spoken publicly about this “bandwidth problem,” as he described it to podcaster Joe Rogan. Musk is so bothered by this, in fact, that he has made it