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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

Science in meter and verse

The SciFy program tests whether adversaries’ most outlandish scientific claims add up or fall apart

Scientists have designed a new kind of paradoxical shape

As rich ore gets harder to find, the mining industry is using subatomic particles to map rock deep underground

Play this crossword inspired by the May 2026 issue of Scientific American

Scientists finally understand why birds were the only dinosaurs to pull through the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

Take apart the grid in this math puzzle

Synchronous fireflies; Grand Canyon fossil footprints

Letters to the editors for the January 2026 issue of Scientific American

With the rise of private orbital habitats, vacations in space are becoming a real possibility for the ultrawealthy

A Polish mathematician's theory on the famous problem of bisecting three solids using one plane

Earth Observatory

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Earth Observatory

1. Science
2. Earth Observatory
3. Super Typhoon Sinlaku

• Earth
• Earth Observatory
• Image of the Day
• EO Explorer
• Topics
• More Content
• About

Neutrinos have mass — yet they never flip between left- and right-handed states the way every other massive particle does. The most logical fix is Paul Dirac's: invisible right-handed neutrinos that interact with nothing whatsoever. The math works. It even produces a beautiful explanation for why neutrino masses are so absurdly tiny. But it requires believing in particles that are permanently, in-principle undetectable.

An ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting a nearby star gave scientists using the Gemini South telescope a look at how both a star and its hot planet can have similar chemical compositions. The team, led by Arizona State University graduate student Jorge Antonio Sanchez, took spectra of the planet, called WASP-189b, using the Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The observations measured the abundance of magnesium compared to silicon in the hot planet's atmosphere and allowed the team to compare it to the makeup of its parent star.

Saturn is one of the most recognisable and studied planets in the Solar System, it was the first thing I ever saw through a telescope and yet it is still finding ways to surprise us. New research analysing data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed a significant and unexpected quirk in Saturn's protective magnetic bubble, one that confirms the giant planets of our Solar System play by completely different rules to Earth.

For the first time in history, scientists have used a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon to search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. China's Chang'E-4 lander sat in the most radio quiet location humanity has ever placed an instrument, shielded from Earth's constant electronic chatter by the entire bulk of the Moon itself. They found nothing but that is almost beside the point!

Deep in the heart of a distant galaxy, two monsters are locked in a death spiral and for the first time, they have been caught them in the act. A new study has confirmed the first close pair of supermassive black holes ever detected, orbiting each other every 121 days and closing in fast. If the models are right, they could collide within a century.

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere by capturing the carbon from burning biomass is supposed to save the planet, but it looks like the flagship project will never happen