Scientific American

Why the FDA rejected a ‘breakthrough’ melanoma drug

For patients whose skin cancer doesn’t respond to traditional treatments, a new drug called RP1 has been a lifeline—at least for those who can get into a clinical trial. The drug has shown so much promise in such trials that, at the end of 2024, its development was placed on a fast track, with all signs pointing to a speedy approval by the Food and Drug Administration. But as of last month, the FDA has twice opted not to approve RP1, puzzling researchers and worrying drug developers.Approximately 110,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed each year in the U.S., and 2.2 percent of people will be diagnosed with it at some point during their life. In its early stages, melanoma skin cancer is highly treatable, with a greater than 99 percent survival rate. Once the disease spreads to other areas of the body, however, treatment becomes much more difficult, and the five-year survival rate dips to roughly 16 percent. Adding even one new option—such as RP1—for people whose melanoma has not responded to first-line treatments could make a big difference for patients’ prognoses.“There’s really no second-line treatments” for some patients, says Yana Najjar, director of the Clinical and Translational Research

Scientific American

SleepMay 1, 2026Americans are exhausted, a new CDC report showsNearly a third of all U.S. adults are sleeping fewer than the recommended seven hours per night on averageSAVE $80 ON AN UNLIMITED SUBSCRIPTION TODAY!May 2026 IssueSpecial EditionPodcastsPopular StoriesParticle PhysicsApril 30, 2026What’s faster than light? DarknessA recent experiment revealed that individual dark points on a light wave can move faster than the wave itselfAdam KovacAnimalsApril 30, 2026A major humpback whale rescue effort is attempting to do something extraordinaryRescuers had called off the effort to save “Timmy,” a humpback whale that had stranded in the Baltic Sea last month. But now a last-ditch attempt to move the creature by barge is underwayK. R. CallawayThe UniverseMay 1, 2026What is the Kardashev scale, and can we climb it?The Kardashev scale is an interesting but flawed gauge of a civilization’s growthPhil PlaitGeneticsApril 30, 2026Human genome decoder J. Craig Venter dies at age 79Scientist and medical technology entrepreneur J. Craig Venter published the first bacterial genome ever decoded in 1995. The result heralded a new age of discovery for geneticsClaire CameronAnimalsApril 28, 2026City birds appear to be more afraid of women than men, and scientists have no idea why“I fully believe our results, that urban birds

A SpaceX rocket booster may be on track to hit the moon in August

A SpaceX rocket booster is on track to hit the moon at several times the speed of soundWhile there is no immediate danger, this crash highlights that space junk is increasingly expanding out of lower-Earth orbitBy Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron SOPA Images/Getty ImagesA stray piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is on course to smash into the moon’s surface at several times the speed of sound in August. The collision is likely to leave a crater—and it highlights the risk of space junk to the lunar surface at a moment when NASA and other national space agencies are pushing hard to return humans to the moon.The wayward booster was spotted by independent astronomer Bill Gray, who develops and sells software dedicated to tracking celestial objects both artificial and natural. The rocket originally launched in January 2025 and carried other private space companies’ lunar landers: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and Japanese firm ispace’s Hakuto-R. After the rocket set the landers on a path for the lunar surface, the booster was supposed to burn up following its reentry in Earth’s atmosphere. But that’s not what happened.Instead it entered a 26-day-long orbit that took it up to 310,000 miles away

Watch NASA test its new X-59 jet designed to go faster than the speed of sound

This next-generation plane is made to go faster than sound without producing a full sonic boomBy Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire CameronJoin Our Community of Science Lovers!NASA wants to make supersonic travel quieter. On Thursday the agency released new footage of its X-59 jet, a still-in-development plane that is designed to break the sound barrier over land—but with a sonic “thud” rather than a boom.Faster air travel speeds mean shorter flights. But when an aircraft travels more rapidly than the speed of sound, it creates shock waves, generating a sonic boom. Those sonic booms can be a nuisance for people living nearby and can even cause damage to homes and startle animals.The X-59 jet is NASA’s answer to that problem. Featuring a needlelike tip, it’s designed to travel at more than 1,000 miles per hour—about twice as fast as a commercial jet—while limiting the noise of the boom. NASA expects its sonic “thump” to be as loud as “distant thunder” or the thud of a car door closing down the block.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories

A third of U.S. adults don’t get enough sleep, new CDC report warns

Americans are exhausted, a new CDC report showsNearly a third of all U.S. adults are sleeping fewer than the recommended seven hours per night on averageBy Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron Deagreez/Getty ImagesJoin Our Community of Science Lovers!Are you tired? If so, you aren’t alone. An alarming number of the country’s adults are tired most days, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that could have significant implications for public health.In 2024, the year the data were collected, nearly a third of all U.S. adults slept fewer than the recommended seven hours per night on average. Only a little more than half of U.S. adults said they woke up feeling “well-rested” on most days.It’s hard to overstate how important sleep is for your health: Research shows that getting enough rest can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, help regulate hormones, and keep blood sugar under control and that it may even help fight dementia. It can also affect your mood and mental health.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful

US lawmakers vote to cut science spending—but reject Trump’s sweeping reductions

A draft bill would preserve NASA’s overall funding but downsize the National Science Foundation’s budget by 20 percent.By Dan Garisto & Nature magazine President Trump’s proposal for huge cuts to a number of key science agencies was rejected by a Congressional panel Thursday. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMembers of the US House of Representatives signalled that they would again reject a proposal by the administration of US President Donald Trump to slash science spending. But the bill advanced by a House subcommittee on Thursday still calls for substantial cuts to science education and spending by agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Senate, which also has a say on federal budgets, has yet to schedule a hearing on its own spending bill.Last year, the Trump administration proposed unprecedented cuts to science agencies in 2026, only for Congress to reject those cuts and instead keep science spending relatively flat. In April, the Trump administration tried again, calling for the NSF’s 2027 spending to fall by 55% from 2026 levels and for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s and NASA’s to fall by more than 27% and by 23%, respectively. According to the administration’s 2027 budget proposal, “every tool in the

What is the AI compute crunch, and why are AI tools hitting usage limits?

In late March some of the heaviest users of Anthropic’s Claude large language models began posting screenshots of a strange new scarcity: they were reaching five-hour usage limits in 20 minutes. Complaints spread across Reddit, GitHub and X. Anthropic told subscribers that their sessions would burn through usage limits faster during peak hours. The company also blocked some third-party tools, including OpenClaw, from drawing on its flat-rate subscription limits. Several weeks earlier Boris Cherny, who leads Claude Code, said that a default setting for how the model thinks had been lowered.Users immediately questioned why a paid AI tool was suddenly giving them less. Had the AI boom begun to outrun the machinery needed to sustain it?The pressure is not limited to Anthropic. OpenAI has begun shuttering Sora, its video-generation platform, as the number of developers using its coding assistant Codex has surged to four million per week. Investors and developers are now talking about a “compute crunch,” the possibility that demand for AI is growing faster than companies can build data centers and power them.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future

Trump, ibogaine and the science behind the psychedelics boom in the U.S.

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.For years when most people thought about psychedelic drugs, they pictured long-haired tripping hippies either having a ball or risking and wasting their lives, depending on the tenor of the anti-drug messaging one happened to be subject to. That association was cemented in the late 1960s, when modern scientific study of psychedelics—which had been picking up speed since the ’50s—ground to a halt, thanks to government regulation and negative public opinion. But when science ceded psychedelics to the counterculture movement, it abandoned promising results on the power of these drugs to change human minds for the better.Then, at the turn of the 21st century, Johns Hopkins University received the first regulatory approval to resume the study of psychedelics in the U.S. The university’s research kicked off a full-blown psychedelics renaissance, putting a spotlight on MDMA, psilocybin and other drugs previously known for their recreational effects as potential treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance-use disorder and more.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping

‘Spectacular’ Viking coin hoard discovery is likely the largest in history

Archaeologists have uncovered around 3,000 silver coins so far—and more could come to lightBy Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner Innlandet County AuthorityJoin Our Community of Science Lovers!Archaeologists are hailing the discovery of a “spectacular” hoard of roughly 3,000 Viking coins found in a field in eastern Norway. More could yet be uncovered—the search is ongoing.“This is a historic find. The fact that it is also from the Viking Age makes it even more spectacular,” said Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, the country’s minister of climate and environment, in a statement.The coins were initially discovered by two metal detectorists in a field near the Norwegian city of Rena in the region of Østerdalen, according to the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. On April 10 the pair uncovered 19 silver coins; they immediately informed local officials.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The hoard includes specimens from the 980s to the 1040s C.E.—the height of the Viking Age. Notably, many of the coins were foreign-made, originating from England and Germany and including elements

At shadow climate summit on phasing out fossil fuels, scientists are center stage

April 30, 20264 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmScientists know how to phase out fossil fuels. Some countries are listeningRepresentatives of more than 50 nations gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, this week at what was billed as the first global summit on phasing out fossil fuels. A panel of scientists will be advising themBy Mariana Lenharo & Nature magazine Colombia's Environment Minister Irene Velez speaks during an interview with AFP in Santa Marta, Colombia, on April 26, 2026, on the sidelines of the International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Raul ARBOLEDA / AFP via Getty ImagesClimate scientists, who have warned of the dangers of global warming for decades, have found some countries to listen. This week, representatives of more than 50 nations gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, at what was billed as the first global summit on phasing out fossil fuels. One of the first orders of business was to launch a panel of scientists that will advise those countries on how to shift to clean energy.“Here, you have a coalition of governments that decided they actually want to be informed by the science,” says Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, an international climate-change law specialist at the University

Scientists just discovered what is fueling cows’ potent burps

April 30, 20262 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmThe “hydrogenobody,” a newly discovered structure inside microbial cells in cows’ gut, may play a key role in methane production, a new study suggestsBy Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron Johner Images/Getty ImagesCattle such as cows are notorious burpers. A single bovine can belch out as much as 220 pounds of methane in a year. Why their burps are so potent seems to have to do with a special structure inside microbes living in their gut—something researchers are calling the “hydrogenobody,” according to new research. The findings could help scientists trying to combat how much methane cattle emit—methane is a greenhouse gas, and the animals are one of the top agricultural sources of these emissions.Like you, cattle have a microbiome. Among the microbes in their gut are a group of microorganisms called “rumen ciliates” that help the bovines digest food and are named for the rumen, the stomach compartment they inhabit, and the cilia, or tiny hairs, that cover their surface. Scientists have suspected for years that these microbes were involved in making methane in cows’ gut, but exactly how they were involved was a mystery.New research could hold the

Trump withdraws wellness influencer and MAHA activist Casey Means as surgeon general nominee

April 30, 20264 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmOn Thursday the president announced he is nominating Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and Fox News contributor, as the nation’s top doctorBy Adam Kovac edited by Claire CameronBrendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images Make America Health Again (MAHA) activist and wellness influencer Casey Means is out of the running to be President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general. On Thursday the president announced that he is nominating radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier for the job instead—she is Trump’s third pick to be the “nation’s doctor” since his second term in office began.The decision to pull Means from the nomination comes a little less than a year after Trump first tapped her for the role in May 2025. Means’s path to the job had become mired in the Senate amid growing concern among lawmakers, including Republican senator and physician Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, over her stances on vaccines, abortion pills and alternative medicine.A graduate of the Stanford University School of Medicine, Means dropped out of a surgical residency in 2018 and founded an alternative medicine practice. She also co-authored a book that promotes organic foods and criticizes processed foods and sugars as

Scientists use AI to test whether life can run on only 19 amino acids

April 30, 20264 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmScientists used AI to rewrite part of life’s alphabetAn engineered E. coli strain survived after one amino acid was designed out of many of its ribosomal proteins—an early test of whether life’s chemistry can be simplifiedBy Jacek Krywko edited by Eric SullivanAn illustration of protein production inside a bacterium. In a new study, researchers used AI to redesign some E. coli ribosomal proteins to work without the amino acid isoleucine. BSIP/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesNearly all known life builds proteins from the same alphabet of 20 canonical amino acids. Strung together in different orders, those building blocks form the proteins that make cells work. In a new Science study, researchers at Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University used artificial-intelligence-guided protein design to test how much of that alphabet can be pared back: they engineered an Escherichia coli strain that survived after it was redesigned to not have a specific amino acid in its ribosomal proteins.The team did not create a true 19-amino-acid organism. The engineered strain still uses the targeted amino acid, isoleucine, throughout most of its genome. But the result suggests that one of

The effort to rescue ‘Timmy’ the humpback whale just took a risky turn

April 30, 20262 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmA major humpback whale rescue effort is attempting to do something extraordinaryRescuers had called off the effort to save “Timmy,” a humpback whale that had stranded in the Baltic Sea last month. But now a last-ditch attempt to move the creature by barge is underwayBy K. R. Callaway edited by Claire CameronAfter more than a month in the Baltic Sea, a stranded whale that’s captured the public’s hearts is headed to safer waters. Frank Molter/AFP via Getty ImagesFor more than a month, a humpback whale nicknamed Timmy has been stranded in the Baltic Sea off Germany. In early April rescuers called off the effort to save the creature, which had repeatedly become stuck on sandbanks and seemed in bad physical shape. But now, in a last-ditch attempt to save the whale, a team has loaded Timmy onto a specialized barge to essentially drag it to the North Sea. The International Whaling Commission, a global body that manages whale conservation, has called the effort “inadvisable.” Whether Timmy will survive is still uncertain, but some experts hope the story will inspire people to do more to protect whales.“My guess would be that it’ll

JWST discovers ‘red monster’ galaxy that challenges astronomers’ understanding of the early universe

April 30, 20264 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmAstronomers puzzle over early origins of mysterious ‘red monster’ galaxyResearchers are perplexed by a galaxy that seems too large and too dusty for its place in cosmic history, less than a half-billion years after the big bangBy Jenna Ahart edited by Lee Billings Xuanyu Han/Getty ImagesAstronomers studying the early universe with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found what seems to be a time traveler from the future: a large galaxy so chock-full of dust that the light from its bountiful blue stars has turned a crimson hue. Such heavy loads of dust are generally thought to arise much later in cosmic history than circa 400 million years after the big bang, the epoch at which this newfound galaxy appears.Although the work has yet to be peer-reviewed, a preprint study that analyzed this “red monster” galaxy, officially called EGS-z11-R0, is already making waves in the astronomical community. “It’s astonishing to think about how short these timescales are,” says Pieter van Dokkum, an astrophysicist at Yale University, who was not involved in the study. “Sharks and turtles have been around for about that long.”For perspective, seeing such a big, dusty galaxy

Pioneering geneticist and decoder of the human genome J. Craig Venter dies at age 79

April 30, 20263 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmScientist and medical technology entrepreneur J. Craig Venter published the first bacterial genome ever decoded in 1995. The result heralded a new age of discovery for geneticsBy Claire Cameron Geneticist J. Craig Venter in a photograph from 2015. K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty ImageJ. Craig Venter, the scientist who raced to decode the human genome, has died at age 79.Venter rose to fame in the field for publishing the first bacterial genome ever decoded, along with a list of gene annotations, in 1995. The achievement kicked off an age of discovery in genetics, with researchers racing to decode the genomes of other pathogens—and eventually animals.As founder of Celera Genomics in 1998, Venter honed his method of decoding—whole-genome shotgun sequencing—which can rapidly sequence different parts of the genome at the same time and then uses machine learning to reassemble them in the right order. The technique allowed him to enter the race to decode the human genome late.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and

What’s faster than light? Darkness

April 30, 20262 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmA recent experiment revealed that individual dark points on a light wave can move faster than the wave itselfBy Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron MirageC/Getty ImagesJoin Our Community of Science Lovers!The speed of light in a vacuum has been known as both a universal constant and a hard speed limit for all matter in the universe ever since Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity in 1905. Rules, however, are made to be broken. And an international team of physicists appears to have found just such a loophole: the only thing that goes faster than light, it turns out, is darkness.More specifically, individual dark spots known as optical vortices, or phase singularities, do so. As a light wave travels through space, it oscillates and twists—at the center of that twist, the peaks and troughs of the light wave cancel each other out, creating dark spots that—under certain conditions—outrun the light wave itself. The research was conducted by Technion–Israel Institute of Technology physicist Ido Kaminer and his colleagues.“Our discovery reveals universal laws of nature shared by all types of waves, from sound waves and fluid flows to complex systems such

City birds appear more afraid of women than men, and scientists have no idea why

April 28, 20262 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm“I fully believe our results, that urban birds react differently based on the sex of the person approaching them,” said a co-author of a study that made this finding, “but I can’t explain them right now”By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner imageBROKER/Kevin Sawford via Getty ImagesJoin Our Community of Science Lovers!European Great Tits and 36 other bird species on the continent are more afraid of women than they are of men, according to a recent study—and researchers have no idea why.In the study, men could get about a meter closer to birds than women could before the animals flew away, according to the results. This pattern remained regardless of what the men and women were wearing, what their height was or how they tried to approach the creatures. That suggests birds may be able to suss out the sex of a human, though the researchers aren’t sure how.“I fully believe our results, that urban birds react differently based on the sex of the person approaching them, but I can’t explain them right now,” said Daniel Blumstein, a co-author of the study and a professor at the University of California, Los

How geneticists uncovered a common root of two neurological diseases

On the surface, frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are very different neurodegenerative diseases. In FTD, people can experience drastic changes in personality and behavior as neurons in the brain regions that control decision-making and language die off. ALS, on the other hand, frequently begins with muscle weakness and difficulty with swallowing and speech as people lose nerve cells that allow the brain to control the body.“They’re two very clinically disparate syndromes,” says neurogeneticist Bryan Traynor of the National Institutes of Health, who studies ALS. As a doctor, “you would not mistake them.”And yet these two disorders may have the same underlying causes, as Traynor and Rosa Rademakers, a neurogeneticist who studies FTD, and their respective colleagues discovered independently in 2011. Though most cases of ALS are “sporadic,” or apparently occurring without a family history, 5 to 10 percent come from genetic causes that are passed down through families. After four years of scouring the genomes of affected families for a responsible gene, Traynor and Rademakers identified a mutation of a gene called C9ORF72 that many people with a family history of both diseases share.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by

How two mathematicians solved a cryptography mystery

On October 30, 1942, a group of destroyer warships from the British Royal Navy hunted down a Nazi submarine near the Nile Delta. The warships pounded the submarine with underwater explosions until it floated to the surface, where it started filling with water and sinking. As its German crew scrambled to escape, three British heroes—Lieutenant Anthony Fasson, sailor Colin Grazier and 16-year-old canteen assistant Tommy Brown—did something that defied all instinct. They jumped from their ship onto the sinking vessel and climbed inside.They were after the sub’s most valuable cargo: not weapons, not prisoners, but books. The pages contained codes for tuning the Nazi “Enigma machine” that allowed the German forces to communicate in secret. Deep inside the flooding commanding officers’ quarters, the men seized the volumes before the water-soluble ink dissolved into the sea. Only the teenager made it out alive. Less than two months later English mathematician Alan Turing’s team of code breakers used the codes to decipher Nazi messages, an effort estimated to have shortened the war by two years, saving millions of lives.Cryptography is the math of communicating in secret, and it’s as high stakes as math gets. The submarine story and dozens more like it

How to build a space hotel

When astronauts first step onboard commercial space stations, the experience will be unlike anything they’ve encountered before. They could find wood paneling and warm interiors, next-generation sleeping pods, large windows for a stunning view of Earth, and an ambience akin to that of a high-end hotel on the ground. This vision is the promise of multiple private efforts to launch orbital habitats in the coming years that could welcome space tourists and government astronauts alike.But the idea of luxury living in space—something commercial space station operators are so far being careful not to promise—can seem like an oxymoron. For instance, the International Space Station (ISS) is cramped, smelly and filled with crumbs and dead skin cells. Maintaining a comfortable, clean atmosphere, much less a five-star experience, on a functioning spaceship will present all kinds of hurdles. “I’m skeptical,” says Jeff Nosanov, an industry expert based in Atlanta and a former NASA proposal manager. “The challenges of keeping a space station functional are very underappreciated.”The first of four planned commercial space stations, Haven-1 from California-based company Vast, is set to launch early in 2027. These outposts are being developed, some with funding from NASA, as successors to the ISS ahead of

An asteroid extinguished all the dinosaurs except for birds. Here’s why

On the final day of the Cretaceous period, some 66 million years ago, Earth was teeming with a dazzling variety of dinosaurs. In North America, the superpredator Tyrannosaurus rex stalked its favorite prey, the three-horned Triceratops. In Asia, agile raptors eyed herds of duck-billed and armored herbivores, and a menagerie of miniature carnivores and plant eaters roamed the European islands. South of the equator long-necked behemoths heavier than jet airplanes shook the ground as they walked. And all over the world feather-covered dinosaurs flaunted their plumage, some flapping and flying through the air.Then, suddenly, the Age of the Dinosaurs was over. A massive asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico, triggering a chain reaction of carnage: earthquakes, tsunamis and wildfires followed by years of darkness and cold. It was probably the worst moment in Earth history, and before long three out of every four species were extinct. The asteroid was so catastrophic that it spawned one of the greatest myths in science, one so pervasive and repeated so constantly that most of us think it is true. It is the myth that dinosaurs are gone, felled one and all during the end-Cretaceous extinction.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article,

How physicists found a new type of magnet hiding in plain sight

On a breezy afternoon last autumn in Cambridge, Mass., in a laboratory thrumming with the huff-whish-huff sound of refrigeration pumps, Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Jiaruo Li was crafting a new device for storing digital data. She was aiming to use an exotic kind of magnetism discovered in the same lab the previous year to make the device faster and more energy-efficient than any competing technology. Her goal was timely given the current AI-driven boom in data centers and the exploding demand for power it portends.At that moment Li was focused on finding her version of a needle in a haystack: a barely visible flake of nickel bromide with just the right attributes. To get to this point, she’d grown a dime-sized crystal of the compound by baking a glass tube containing nickel bromide powder for 10 days at high temperatures in a computer-controlled oven in an M.I.T. lab. Then, seeking an atomically thin sample, she’d applied a special tape to her creation, peeled it off and transferred the flakes on the tape to a shiny silicon wafer. Now, holding the wafer up to the light, she eyed a galaxy of thousands of tiny golden crystals against a purple

New evidence links heart disease to inflammation—and drugs can stop it

Doctors have been drilled for decades on the four big risks for heart disease, which kills more Americans every year than any other illness. The fearsome foursome: hypertension, smoking, high levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Yet for just as long cardiologists have seen patients who have none of these problems die from heart ailments. And the heart specialists haven’t had the slightest idea why.Up to a quarter of the people admitted to hospitals for heart attacks don’t have any of these four risk factors. Mysteriously, these “low-risk” heart disease patients actually have the worst outcomes. A 2023 analysis found that hospitalized acute coronary patients without any of the four hazards were 57 percent more likely to die compared with those who had at least one.If the big known risk factors miss one in four patients, they still predict trouble as expected for the remaining three. That’s a good record. But it also means that of the roughly 920,000 Americans who die of cardiovascular disease every year, about 230,000 of them will have done so for no understandable reason.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription

Bizarre ‘compleximers’ break the rules of both glass and plastic

April 13, 20262 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmThis bizarre substance breaks the rules of both glass and plasticScientists thought glassy substances had to be either moldable or impact-resistant—but compleximers are bothBy Rohini Subrahmanyam edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Thomas Fuchs“Compleximers”—materials that can be molded like window glass but that resist impacts like plastic does—shouldn’t exist, researchers say. Nevertheless, a few grams of one such substance sit in a laboratory at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.In Nature Communications, Wageningen physical chemist Jasper van der Gucht and his team describe what makes compleximers as meltable as glass yet as hard to break as plastic. Someday this paradoxical stuff could make it easier to fashion and fix sturdy protective gear such as helmets.Window glass, called silica, and most plastics are “glassy” materials—when they cool from their liquid states, they don’t solidify into crystals with neatly arranged atoms like water does when it freezes into ice. Instead they form an amorphous mass that feels like a solid but has randomly arranged atoms like a liquid.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful

The world’s deepest sensors will detect earthquakes around the world from far below Antarctica

Here’s how scientists drilled 8,000 feet through ice to place the world’s deepest seismometersBy Vanessa Bates Ramirez edited by Sarah Lewin FrasierResearchers drilled 8,000 feet into South Pole ice to install two seismometers. Robert Anthony/USGSJoin Our Community of Science Lovers!On the surface, Antarctica’s vast ice sheet appears still and unchanging. But deep below, vibrations ripple through the frozen plain, transmitting the movements of Earth’s tectonic plates—and scientists now have a formidable new set of tools to listen in with. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), collaborating with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, has installed the deepest seismometers ever deployed. At 8,000 feet under the ice, the two instruments will record earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater anywhere on the planet with unprecedented accuracy and help to reveal new details of Earth’s deep interior in the process.The South Pole is one of Earth’s quietest places because there is very little humanmade infrastructure and no background “noise” from the planet’s rotation, which can distort seismometer data. At their depth, the new seismometers may also be shielded from disruptive changes in atmospheric pressure, says USGS research geophysicist Robert Anthony, the Deep Ice Seismometer project manager.Engineers “drilled” holes by shooting pressurized hot

Rampant growth of satellite megaconstellations could ruin the night sky

I remember the first time I saw a satellite. I was a teenager, standing in my mildly light-polluted suburban yard and doing my usual stargazing. The satellite was a faint “star” moving slowly and smoothly across the sky, and as I watched it, I felt a mix of awe and wonder that such a thing could be seen—and that humans could put an object into orbit at all.That was a lifetime ago, and I now look back on that evening with more discomfiture than nostalgia; my adolescent naivete feels almost embarrassing.That’s because, these days, seeing one of those celestial travelers fills me with dread. We are firmly in the era of the satellite constellation—groups of dozens of similar satellites—and are currently entering the era of the megaconstellation, wherein groups of thousands of satellites swarm the skies. The clusters of satellites started small, but, like a viral outbreak, they grew almost without us noticing—and now we’re dealing with a pandemic.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.I wrote about this problem

Elephants’ peculiar whiskers help them sense the world around them

February 12, 20263 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmPachyderm whiskers are more flexible at the tip than at the base, allowing elephants to complete delicate tasks with their incredibly strong trunkBy K. R. Callaway edited by Tanya Lewis & Sarah Lewin FrasierZookeeper feeling an elephant's whiskers. Heidelberg Zoo & Alejandro Posada, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent SystemsWatching an elephant forage for roots reveals both the strength and the sensitivity of its trunk. With more than 40,000 muscles, an elephant’s trunk can upend a tree and then gently collect the fragments that fell. It takes baby elephants nearly a year to master using their trunk in this way, and it’s taken humans even longer to understand how they’re able to do it. The secret may come down to elephants’ whiskers.Researchers who analyzed the whiskers lining these animals’ trunks have discovered a unique structural property that helps elephants sense the world around them and determine whether a task calls for strength or sensitivity. In a study published in Science, the authors show that elephants’ whiskers—unlike the whiskers of other mammals—are more flexible at the tip and stiffer closer to the skin.This observation helps scientists better understand elephants’ “umwelt,” or their individual

Personalized mRNA vaccines will revolutionize cancer treatment—if federal funding cuts don’t doom them

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