Originally published in July 1950 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “The outermost planet of the solar system has a mass 10 times smaller than hitherto supposed, according to measurements made by Gerard P. Kuiper of Yerkes Observatory, using the 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain. On the basis of deviations in the path of the planet Neptune, […]
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ben Fried made a difficult decision: He stopped riding New York City’s subway system. He was not alone. Ridership on the city’s notoriously packed commuter trains dropped 92% in mid-April, when New York emerged as an epicenter of the global health crisis. For Fried, the decision was especially tough […]
Beginning on July 23, physicians all over the world took to social media to post pictures of themselves in bikinis, using the hashtag #MedBikini. Against the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and our broad social awakening to a second pandemic of systemic racism, why would thousands of doctors post pictures of something so seemingly […]
Scientific American July 2020 Forests gave way to fields, pushing hunter-gatherers to the margins—geographically and socially Eight thousand years ago small bands of seminomadic hunter-gatherers were the only human beings roaming Europe’s lush, green forests. Archaeological digs in caves and elsewhere have turned up evidence of their Mesolithic technology: flint-tipped tools with which they fished, […]
Nationwide protests against racial injustice have shone a spotlight on U.S. corporations’ lack of diversity. Despite decades of initiatives to increase the number of Black executives, only 1 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black. While there are many reasons for this disparity—including systemic racism and discrimination and a lack of economic opportunity—psychologists have recently […]
The long, squiggly arms of a brittle star—a relative of the sea star with baroque tendencies—have a surprising relationship with the rest of its body. Its arms function more or less independently, sensing their own environment and making their own decisions about how to react to it. They are only loosely coordinated by a nerve […]
When the immune system fights viruses, timing is key. And this maxim may be especially true for its defense against the deadly severe form of COVID-19. Several new studies of immune response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, suggest timing could be critical for a class of proteins known as interferons, which are […]
Bees are a big part of the life cycle of plants, carrying pollen from one flower to another and allowing plants to produce their frequently yummy output. But with bee populations on the decline what can take their place? How about soap bubbles? It may sound fantastical. But Eijiro Miyako and his colleague at the […]
Humans are a really noisy species: hammering and digging, flying and driving, delivering heavy cargo all over the world. And that activity creates seismic noise, which masks delicate signals from faraway small earthquakes. Raphael De Plaen, a seismologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, compares listening for small earthquakes during normal times to sitting […]
The Department of Energy is taking a fresh look at a tough research problem that has baffled experts for more than a decade: developing a low-cost alternative to jet fuel. The search began around 2010, initially pushed by the Department of Defense’s concerns about the United States’ reliance on imported oil. More recently, airlines have […]