Scientific American Content: Global

This telescope has revealed the whipped-up dust from the birth of a star—and a shining background galaxy—more clearly than ever before

Experts say the painful infection, spread to people from mosquitoes, can get to many countries if it finds the right hosts

The Perseids are the best annual meteor shower, but this year’s show will be dimmed by a bright gibbous moon

Companies are experimenting with deep-sea tech to produce cheaper fresh water

Explore the words of science past from Scientific American

An artificial intelligence breakthrough uses reinforcement learning to tackle the Andrews-Curtis conjecture, solving long-standing counterexamples and hinting at tools for forecasting stock crashes, diseases and climate disasters

New research is revealing how disease-smelling dogs can excel

From planets roaming space to major shifts in health funding, catch up with this week’s news roundup.

Napoleon's campaign against the Russian Empire was one of the most costly wars in history. Many soldiers died of diseases. Some of these illnesses are only now being identified

Today this material can seal pipes and brave the ocean. But someday it could be used in surgery or underwater repairs

A survey of more than 1,000 physicists finds deep disagreements in what quantum theories mean in the real world

The first analysis of mushroom bitterness reveals ultrapotent compounds

Bizarre phenomena called light echoes create strange, shifting shapes seen in some telescopic images, and help astronomers chart the heavens above

Representative Eric Sorensen of Illinois shares how his meteorology roots drive his fight to protect climate science and push back against political interference.

In some of its most ambitious work yet, the James Webb Space Telescope looked to spot a planet in a potentially habitable orbit around Alpha Centauri A, the nearest sunlike star to our solar system

Though the Fibonacci sequence shows up everywhere in nature, these young mathematicians were surprised to find it in the answer to a variation of the pick-up sticks problem⁠—a nearly two-century-old form of puzzle

Satellite streaks are ruining astronomical images. Can scientists and space companies find solutions before it’s too late?

AI models supposedly did well on International Math Olympiad problems, but how they got their answers reminds us why we still need people doing math

Solar panels, wind turbines, a hydrogen energy system and lithium-ion batteries are powering China’s newest polar research station

Speed and flexibility have made mRNA a blockbuster technology

Proposed amendments to the Marine Mammal Protection Act would cut down protections to whales, dolphins, polar bears and other species

When serious accidents happen in magnetic resonance imaging scanners, it’s usually because people ignore one very important rule

If the EPA abdicates its responsibility to address climate change, it will harm health and the planet in exchange for pandering to fossil fuel interests

Insights from human brains could inform how scientists search for awareness in all its possible forms

NASA faces historic budget cuts that could shutter missions and stall vital research, prompting a bipartisan outcry from all of the agency’s living former science chiefs.

Infectious bird flu virus was found in milk, on equipment, within wastewater and aerosolized in the air on California dairy farms

A devastating bacterium has decimated populations of sunflower sea stars, predators that play a crucial role in their environment

Fifty-eight people have been infected—and two have died—in a New York City outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease—a severe type of pneumonia caused by a bacterium commonly associated with air-conditioning systems and cooling towers

Spurred by competition from China and Russia, the Trump administration is pushing for nuclear power on the moon by 2030

Companies are adapting this humble clay-based ceramic to keep people cool—without electricity

Birds are starting to make their way south for the winter, and you’ve got a front-row seat to the show

When she was just 17 years old, Hannah Cairo disproved the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture, breaking a four-decade-old mathematical assumption

Kids crave approval from their peers. Chatbots offer an alternative to IRL relationships, but they can come at a price  

The Krasheninnikov volcano, located less than 150 miles away from the epicenter of Russia’s July 29 earthquake, began erupting on August 3

Can “finitism” possibly describe the real world?

JWST observations of light sources before the first galaxies should have formed are raising new questions about our galactic origins

The lowdown on the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to repeal of the “endangerment” finding. Also, how did a juicy ketchup ingredient help create a starchy tuber?

The magnitude 3.0 earthquake that shook the East Coast came nearly a year and a half after a magnitude 4.8 quake shocked New York City and its surroundings

NASA needs clear support from the White House if we want to win the new space race

Winds from the northwest are blowing cool, dry air—but also wildfire smoke—into the U.S. Midwest from Canada

Federal officials seized 3,000 copies of Scientific American in 1950 in a “red scare” era of attacks on science. The move backfired and offers lessons for today

Scientists are uncovering how spinning black holes launch jets, warp spacetime and shape the cosmos

A conversation with Anthropic’s chatbot raises questions about how AI talks about awareness.

Check out Scientific American’s fiction and nonfiction book recommendations for July

The immune system senses damage to cell membranes caused by pore-forming proteins and mounts a response

A relatively small detector caught neutrinos from a nuclear reactor using a technique known as coherent scattering

When people viewed virtual avatars with coughs or rashes, their brain triggered an immune response

About nine million years ago, a hybridization involving the lineage of another farmers market star gave rise to the modern-day cultivated potato

A lighting flash that spanned from East Texas to an area near Kansas City in 2017 is officially the longest lightning strike ever measured, according to the World Meteorological Organization

As Earth spins through space, its rate of rotation changes. Here’s why