The weight of New York City’s 1.1 million buildings is making the city slowly sink | Continue reading
A computer scientist explains what it means when the inner workings of AIs are hidden | Continue reading
The COVID pandemic caused a U.S.-wide decline in fertility rates, but red states actually saw increases | Continue reading
Here's how to reconcile the mismatch in what your senses are telling your brain | Continue reading
Many physicians say they are reluctant to practice in states with abortion bans, harming access to regular exams and screenings | Continue reading
Presidential contender Ron DeSantis has used governmental power in Florida to restrict access to health and education, promoting an intolerant and harmful agenda | Continue reading
The device provides a connection between the brain and spinal cord, allowing thought to control movement | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence algorithms will soon reach a point of rapid self-improvement that threatens our ability to control them and poses great potential risk to humanity | Continue reading
Miniature satellites called CubeSats will collect meteorologic data that NASA hopes will help explain how and why some tropical storms intensify as they approach land | Continue reading
Is generative AI bad for the environment? A computer scientist explains the carbon footprint of ChatGPT and its cousins—and how to reduce it | Continue reading
As with climate change, adverse changes in democratic practices require societal adaptation to avoid the worst scenarios | Continue reading
The ChatGPT AI can ace an IQ test, but it can’t beat brainteasers like those devised by legendary math puzzler Martin Gardner | Continue reading
Earlier this month a meteorite crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home. The residents are still pondering the fate of their gift from the skies | Continue reading
Investments in research and development are likely to drop—even if the worst-case scenario is avoided | Continue reading
New research pokes holes in the idea that the cosmos expanded and then contracted before beginning again | Continue reading
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks visited Alaska this week to see how climate change is undermining infrastructure at Arctic military bases | Continue reading
Politically polarized Google users are not steered to partisan sites by the search engine’s algorithm but generally decide to go there on their own | Continue reading
Killer whales in a group near Spain and Portugal may be teaching one another to mess with small boats. They sank their third vessel earlier this month | Continue reading
What you pay for tests, vaccines, and medicine will change | Continue reading
After reading a Scientific American editorial on sleep and school start times, students and their teacher wrote to the editors about their experiences. Their district listened, and school will start later next year | Continue reading
The death throes of a massive star in the galaxy M101, located just 21 million light-years away from Earth, are entrancing professional and amateur astronomers alike | Continue reading
The Montreal Protocol was intended to save Earth’s ozone layer, but it also helped slow global warming and delayed the melting of Arctic sea ice | Continue reading
How realistic is it to expect to find enough ice on the moon to support human habitation? | Continue reading
A flexible, conductive membrane that can pass sensory information to the brain and muscles is a step towards artificial skin | Continue reading
The huge watery cloud spurting from Enceladus could carry the ingredients for life farther into space than previously known | Continue reading
The least skilled people know how much they don't know, but everyone thinks they are better than average | Continue reading
A young mountain gorilla who is able to survive the tough early years may live as long or longer than peers who coasted through their youth without incident | Continue reading
Cell phone towers leak radio waves into space, but they’ll be tough for aliens to detect | Continue reading
Most real numbers are unknown—even to mathematicians | Continue reading
Researchers still hope to discover hundreds of new binary black hole mergers despite technical setbacks that have sidelined key detectors in Italy and Japan | Continue reading
Researchers still hope to discover hundreds of new binary black hole mergers despite technical setbacks that have sidelined key detectors in Italy and Japan | Continue reading
Used diapers can replace up to 40 percent of the sand that is typically used in making concrete, lowering costs and keeping more trash out of landfills | Continue reading
World Biodiversity Day reminds us that the profound crises we confront are just different sides of the same coin | Continue reading
The U.S. should implement the same reforms to its high court that it has called for in other nations, a judicial reform scholar suggests | Continue reading
A cluster of U.S. residents who traveled for surgery have developed severe fungal infections in the spine and brain. Here’s what you need to know about the disease | Continue reading
After years of downtime for upgrades, the world’s premier gravitational-wave observatories are coming back online with big hopes for transformative discoveries | Continue reading
Solving a notorious quantum quandary could require abandoning some of science’s most cherished assumptions about the physical world | Continue reading
From North America to South Asia, summer heat waves are becoming longer, stronger, and more frequent with climate change | Continue reading
Ovarian cancer is hard to detect and usually deadly. Preemptively removing fallopian tubes during other abdominal surgeries could save hundreds of thousands of lives | Continue reading
Exclusive breastfeeding is not imperative, and the “breast is best” mantra can be harmful to babies and parents, especially to marginalized people | Continue reading
Letters to the editor for the January 2023 issue of Scientific American | Continue reading
To demonstrate our university’s biodiversity, we created maps using Indian folk art, and they have been a resounding success | Continue reading
From upsetting jobs and causing intellectual property issues to models that make up fake answers to questions — here's why we're concerned about Generative AI. | Continue reading
Moral panics aimed against trans people are both attacks on that community and part of a broader strategy to control youth across the U.S. | Continue reading
Using artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to trade stocks and other financial instruments could have benefits—and perils | Continue reading
The last caldera-forming eruption at Yellowstone “was much more complex than previously thought,” according to the annual report about activity at the supervolcano | Continue reading
For academic research to be truly equitable, leadership, not just the scientists from underrepresented groups, must advocate for it | Continue reading
Saturn’s surprisingly young rings and record-breaking bounty of moons make the planet a ripe target for springtime skywatchers | Continue reading