A family of lions takes a midday nap in the middle of a road in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. On a nearby golf course, a lioness sips water from a pond while spotted hyenas and African wild dogs play wrestle on the grass. Halfway around the world, a herd of wild goats feasts on […]
A massive galaxy similar to our own Milky Way spotted shockingly early in the universe’s history is challenging astrophysicists’ understanding of galaxy formation. Witnessed just 1.5 billion years after the big bang, when the universe was some 10 percent of its current age, the spinning disk of gas and stars is the earliest of its […]
Jessica Watkins spent her PhD studying landslides on Mars. Now she is among the few humans with a shot at being the first to walk on the red planet. In January, Watkins graduated as a member of NASA’s newest astronaut class. As a planetary geologist, she is a leading candidate to participate in the agency’s […]
On April 7, global carbon dioxide emissions plummeted to levels not seen since 2006, according to a study released yesterday that suggests the coronavirus pandemic might have led to the largest reduction in CO2 ever recorded. But few scientists are cheering the sudden change. To the contrary, researchers increasingly view the precipitous drop in emissions […]
When I talk to my students about the tempestuous relationship between science and religion, I like to bring up the case of Francis Collins. Early in his career, Collins was a successful gene-hunter, who helped identify genes associated with cystic fibrosis and other disorders. He went on to become one of the world’s most powerful scientists. […]
Originally published in January 1967 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “In the past few years both the methods of ‘lie detection’ and the polygraph itself have been subjected to increasing scrutiny. Although the polygraph was developed as an aid in police work, enterprising practitioners have long since discovered new applications for the device, and since about […]
The human eye is a sophisticated instrument: images enter through a curved lens at the front of the sphere and pass through its gooey, vitreous liquid before reaching the light-sensitive retina—which relays the signal to the optic nerve that carries the picture to the brain. Engineers have attempted to replicate this structure for about a […]
Scientific American May 2020 Earth monitoring and high-speed Internet are driving demand For decades the number of satellites orbiting Earth rose at a gentle pace, but growth has soared recently. By July 2019 more than 2,200 satellites were aloft. In the 1980s and 1990s the action was in geosynchronous orbit (blues), says Jonathan McDowell, an […]
The company SpaceX has already launched hundreds of its Starlink satellites, with plans to put as many as 42,000 of them in Earth orbit. Its goal is to provide high-speed Internet to billions of people. Moving toward that kind of access is laudable and important, but it comes at a cost. Glittering with reflected sunlight, […]
When the novel coronavirus jumped to humans in late 2019—adapting so well to its new host species that it caused a pandemic—it was beating the odds. Although scientists estimate that roughly 60 percent of known human pathogens and up to 75 percent of those associated with emerging diseases originate in animals, successful “spillover” remains exceedingly […]