Feed aggregator
The real science of Pokémon
The Pokémon franchise, including its recent game Pokémon Pokopia, is inspired by real animals and their ecology. It’s no surprise that so many scientists love to try and “catch ’em all”
New evidence links heart disease to inflammation—and drugs can stop it
Immune system overreactions may be the true culprit of cardiac illness—and lifesaving drugs can calm them down
The engineering marvels hidden inside six-figure watches
Modern luxury watches can be traced back to one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s younger sisters
Expensive versus affordable binoculars—what’s the difference?
Binoculars and other far-range optics span a gamut of price points. Here’s what separates top-tier from entry-level
How chemists engineer the signature smells of luxury perfumes
At Givaudan and IFF, chemists build—and safeguard—new aroma molecules tightly linked to emotion and memory
How two mathematicians solved a cryptography mystery
The Diffie-Hellman key exchange secures everything from your text messages to government secrets
How physicists found a new type of magnet hiding in plain sight
How the discovery of altermagnets could change physics and computing
A hot pair of supplements, creatine and methylene blue dye, may not work together
Creatine does help build muscle, but social media claims for methylene blue dye are way overblown
Unlikely paths to discovery
Sometimes innovation can be traced back to bizarre places: a muddy streambed, a volcanic ash field or even a hotel-company boardroom
The baffling ecological disaster that's killing America’s freshwater mussels
Biologists are racing to save America’s freshwater mussels—the water-filtering keystone species that once filled the country’s rivers and streams—from extinction
Poem: ‘How I Became a Spitfire Pilot during My Cataract Operation’
Science in meter and verse
DARPA built an AI to fact-check enemy weapons claims
The SciFy program tests whether adversaries’ most outlandish scientific claims add up or fall apart
Mathematicians created an ‘impossible’ shape that shouldn’t exist
Scientists have designed a new kind of paradoxical shape
How cosmic rays are helping mining companies find critical minerals underground
As rich ore gets harder to find, the mining industry is using subatomic particles to map rock deep underground
Science crossword: Hot stuff
Play this crossword inspired by the May 2026 issue of Scientific American
An asteroid extinguished all the dinosaurs except for birds. Here’s why
Scientists finally understand why birds were the only dinosaurs to pull through the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
May 2026: Science History from 50, 100 and 150 Years Ago
Synchronous fireflies; Grand Canyon fossil footprints
Readers respond to the January 2026 issue
Letters to the editors for the January 2026 issue of Scientific American