Scientific American

SpaceX is now targeting the evening of May 21 to launch the latest and largest version of its Starship megarocket for the first time

Will computers based on quantum physics really change the world?

The intimidating legacy of the scariest problem in mathematics

Eight of the top 10 officials at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have now been pushed out since President Donald Trump took office

The sudden resolution of a well-known conjecture highlights the growing adoption of AI as an assistant in high-level mathematics

The asteroid will swing by Earth on Monday and be close enough to be visible using an amateur telescope

Researchers discovered the copy of the 1,300-year-old poem lurking inside a historical text in an Italian library

Start your morning with today’s Spellements. Create as many words as you can from our daily selection of letters—including one tied to recent science news. Play now.

As world health leaders face deadly outbreaks of hantavirus and Ebola, a major pandemic preparedness report finds we are less safe from viral outbreaks than before COVID

This company says its pulsed plasma machine will deliver electricity to the grid by 2029. Some physicists warn that its promises are outrunning what the technology has proved

Some extinct human ancestors and modern-day apes appear to share wrist traits that raise the question of whether our last common ancestor walked on its knuckles

At least six Americans are believed to have been exposed to the Ebola virus, and one person who appears to have contracted the virus has been evacuated to Germany

Scientific American spoke to one of the people who are currently being monitored for possible hantavirus infection at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska

A Bermuda high parked over the western Atlantic is pulling sweltering air up from the south, challenging records in parts of the eastern U.S.

Sharla Boehm, a math teacher, spent her summers coding. She’d go on to build what would eventually evolve into the Internet

Research suggests depression assessment questionnaires can’t reliably compare people with differing intelligence

March was a scorching 9.35 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 20th-century average for the month, capping the hottest 12-month stretch for the U.S. since records began in 1895

The long-tailed pygmy rice rat is the primary host for Andes virus, the type of hantavirus responsible for sickening passengers on the MV Hondius cruise ship

Ozempic and just getting older take off muscle. New therapies could retain it

The new image shows the galaxy NGC 1266, a transitional object with a clutch of young stars that likely collided with a smaller galaxy 500 million years ago

Clinical trials for treatments against Ebola Bundibugyo virus are ‘in a strong position’ to be launched quickly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda

Fix the matchstick equation in this math puzzle

Mosaic depictions of a weapon-wielding female gladiator are the first physical evidence showing women in ancient Rome could be skilled beast hunters

Door-building spiders; a new quantum liquid

To build its moon base, NASA needs a lot of power

Quantum computing could lead to revolutions in cryptography, materials design and telecommunications. But fulfilling those promises could be many years away

Sometimes science does make our world turn upside down

Here are six ways to build a quantum computer

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

Commercial satellites can now watch much of Earth in near-real time. Militaries are learning new ways to fool them

Researchers at the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory worked round the clock to develop a test for the Andes virus at the center of the deadly cruise ship outbreak

Researchers know very little about how long the Andes version of the hantavirus can remain in human hosts

What you should know about hantavirus, why PCOS is getting a new name, and how some fish hide in an unusual spot

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

This snail became the first animal living on deep-sea hydrothermal vents to be added to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species—it also turns poisonous sulfur into armor

Genetic analysis suggests interbreeding between two groups of human relatives

The filmmaker behind the newly released movie Silent Friend shares the scientific and historical inspiration for its story of botanical consciousness

The hantavirus cruise outbreak may not have started in a garbage dump in Ushuaia, Argentina, after all

A mathematical ratio could explain why AI-generated art doesn’t evoke awe from viewers