Scientific American

Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman stands in front of a blackboard strewn with notation in his lab in Los Angeles, Californina.

MathematicsJune 7, 2026

How math can help you decide what to order for dinner

An experiment with 2,520 participants backs Richard Feynman’s answer to every diner’s dilemma: do I want to try something new?

Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine

Scientific American Summer Reading Challenge illustration of a sun wearing glasses reading a book.

BooksJune 1, 2026

Scientific American Summer Reading Challenge

Brianne Kane

View through a rounded hole of a diver in front of two cylinders of underwater habitat on the seafloor.

OceansJune 6, 2026

Aquanauts experience awe-inspiring ‘underview effect’

Susan Cosier

Artwork of black hole surrounded by an accretion disc of material, the light from which is warped by the strong gravity. Both the front of the disc and the portion behind the black hole are visible.

The UniverseJune 5, 2026

Giant black holes may be the universe’s best planet makers

Phil Plait

An illustration of someone painting underwater on the cover of Scientific American Magazine Vol 126 Issue 5.

GamesJune 7, 2026

Cover Art Jigsaw: May 1922

K. R. Callaway

The Young American Scientists Event—Register Now

a spikey sea cucumber on ocean floor

AnimalsJune 7, 2026

Can AI detect smuggled sea cucumbers?

Jackie Flynn Mogensen

A soaring plane with an exceptionally pointy nose and X-59 written on the tail.

TechnologyJune 6, 2026

NASA’s X-59 plane goes supersonic for the first time

Meghan Bartels

A billboard for Kalshi in Times Square, New York City, showing 2024 US presidential-election odds with images of Trump and Harris facing off.

MathematicsJune 6, 2026

How prediction markets could forecast the future of science

Jenna Ahart, Nature magazine

A data center worker stands in a narrow aisle between tall server racks packed with colorful cables.

Artificial IntelligenceJune 5, 2026

Anthropic warns AI could soon start improving itself. Critics aren’t convinced

Chris Stokel-Walker

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June 2026 Issue

A chandelier-shaped cooling system for the quantum computer IBM Quantum System Two.

Quantum Physics

Quantum computing is reaching its make-or-break moment

Adam Becker

An illustration of green computer chips and purple spheres representing quantum bits seem to fly out from a central point of light.

Quantum Computing

What’s a quantum computer good for, anyway?

Zeeya Merali

A stretch of the Via Appia showing the straight construction and stone paving associated with classic Roman roads

Archaeology

New map reveals lost roads of the Roman Empire

Tom Brughmans

An orange and red cross-hatched gradient forms a four-lobed shape over a vast coordinate plane. Along the “x-axis” at the center is a black blob, shaped like a horizontal tear-drop.

Mathematics

The million-dollar math problem hardly anyone is trying to solve

Joseph Howlett

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket launches on a fiery pillar of exhaust surrounded by billowing clouds, sending the Orion crew capsule of the space agency’s Artemis II lunar mission into orbit.

Space Exploration

NASA’s Artemis II launched on first crewed moon mission of the 21st century

Nadia Drake

A false-color view of the moon's Orientale Basin.

Planetary Science

NASA’s Artemis era may finally solve three major moon mysteries

Robin George Andrews

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Games

A robot hand reaches toward bubbles with letters in them

Spellements

Create as many words as you can!

Illustration of a hand and multiple numbers against a purple background.

Math Puzzles

Stretch your math muscles with these puzzles.

A robot hand unleashes a swirl of puzzle pieces, crosswords, and circles with numbers and letters

All Games

Science inspired games, puzzles and quizzes

Special Edition

An illustration of a galaxy.

Astronomy

The new story of the Milky Way’s surprisingly turbulent past

Ann Finkbeiner

Doark amorphous shape

Dark Matter

Dark matter might lurk in its own shadow world

Kathryn Zurek

Illustration of a woman at a desk and her dog living in a spacecraft.

Space Exploration

Why we'll never live in space

Sarah Scoles

Illustration of a black hole in a geometric-like universe

Black Holes

The puzzle of the first black holes

Priyamvada Natarajan

Illustration of a dragon-like creature coming to life out of a long roll of paper

Astrophysics

What if we never find dark matter?

Tracy R. Slatyer, Tim M. P. Tait

Conceptual image of the timeline of the cosmos

Cosmology

Astronomers’ epic quest to witness the cosmic dawn

Rebecca Boyle

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Podcasts

Wooden blocks with letters spell PCOS against a blurry white background

Inside the multiyear effort to rename PCOS

Rachel Feltman, Sushmita Pathak, Alex Sugiura

An image of a woman waiting for an elevator in a building

MathJune 3, 2026

How elevators, pizza and card shuffles reveal the surprising math of everyday life

Rachel Feltman, Manon Bischoff, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

An image of a health worker wearing protective equipment crouching beside the coffin outside a home in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Public HealthJune 1, 2026

A new Ebola outbreak has killed hundreds—and the U.S. response is alarming experts

Rachel Feltman, Tanya Lewis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

An illustration of a book cover with a hand print on a starry dark background.

BooksMay 29, 2026

What our phones, playlists and AI companions reveal about being human

Brianne Kane, Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

An illustration of a book cover with the words "Ecocivilization" against a faded yellow background

The EnvironmentMay 27, 2026

A new book debunks the myth of human selfishness—and makes the case for an ‘ecocivilization’

Rachel Feltman, Sushmita Pathak, Alex Sugiura

Discussions

Should religious thinkers help shape AI?

25View the Discussion

Do you think the Riemann Hypothesis is true? Will anyone ever prove it?

11View the Discussion

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Popular Stories

A soaring plane with an exceptionally pointy nose and X-59 written on the tail.

TechnologyJune 6, 2026

NASA’s X-59 plane goes supersonic for the first time

This experimental plane, which reached supersonic speeds yesterday, is designed to travel faster than the speed of sound without creating bothersome sonic booms

Meghan Bartels

Long shot of the White House with the Thomas Jefferson Memorial visible behind it.

Public HealthJune 4, 2026

White House reclassifies federal epidemiologists and other scientists from civil servants to ‘at-will’ hires

The long-anticipated “Schedule F” order strips job protections meant to safeguard federal employees from political interference

Dan Vergano

A data center worker stands in a narrow aisle between tall server racks packed with colorful cables.

Artificial IntelligenceJune 5, 2026

Anthropic warns AI could soon start improving itself. Critics aren’t convinced

The maker of Claude wants AI labs, including itself, to prepare for a coordinated slowdown if models begin building their own successors

Chris Stokel-Walker

Overhead view of several houses with roofs covered in snow clustered around well-lit streets at night.

EvolutionJune 4, 2026

Humans conquered the planet 300 times faster than genetic evolution can explain

Culture is humanity’s secret for world domination. This calculation shows just how powerful it is

Cody Cottier

Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman stands in front of a blackboard strewn with notation in his lab in Los Angeles, Californina.

MathematicsJune 7, 2026

How math can help you decide what to order for dinner

An experiment with 2,520 participants backs Richard Feynman’s answer to every diner’s dilemma: do I want to try something new?

Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine

A bunch of wooden blocks of integers

MathJune 2, 2026

How Gödel numbers let you do math with math itself

By encoding mathematical statements into numbers, mathematician Kurt Gödel used ordinary arithmetic to check whether a statement can be proved

Manon Bischoff

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