Scientific American

AstronomyNovember 19, 2025

NASA’s Latest Images Bring Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Into View

NASA spacecraft across the inner solar system captured new views of Comet 3I/ATLAS—the third known interstellar object

Meghan Bartels

A person in a suit and tie poses in front of an American flag with an odd upward angle on his face

Public HealthNovember 19, 2025

Fluoride in Tap Water Not Linked to Lower Child IQ, Massive Study Finds

Humberto Basilio

Larry Summer in a blue button shirt

The SciencesNovember 19, 2025

Epstein Files Spark Harvard Investigation into Larry Summers

Dan Vergano

An image of a person holding their bloated stomach with a pile of plates in front of them on a table with food scraps left on them signifying the end of a large meal

FoodNovember 19, 2025

How to Keep Your Gut Happy This Holiday Season

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura, Jeffery DelViscio

GamesNovember 19, 2025

Spellements: Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Emma R. Hasson

Special Offer: $1 for 90 Days

A protester holding a sign saying "Protect Trans Kids"

PoliticsNovember 19, 2025

RFK, Jr., Releases Report Attacking Medical Care for Trans Children

Dan Vergano

Bowl of shelled peanuts on a bright blue background

VaccinesNovember 19, 2025

RFK, Jr., Says Peanut Allergies May Be Tied to Aluminum in Vaccines and Pesticides. Here's What the Science Says

Tanya Lewis

Photo of two human ancestor skulls facing each other with pink heart in the background

AnthropologyNovember 19, 2025

Kissing May Have Evolved 21.5 Million Years Ago

Stephanie Pappas

A full-color image of a large galaxy cluster. Some galaxies are warped by gravitational lensing.

UniverseNovember 19, 2025

JWST May Have Seen the First Stars in the Universe

Humberto Basilio

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December 2025 Issue

Plastic bag floating underwater

Sustainability

How the Fossil-Fuel Industry’s Pivot to Plastic Is Polluting Our Planet

Beth Gardiner

Illustration of a row of human figures (minimialist in style—just outlines, even stick figures), each in a different rainbow color, with a row of vaccines (eg needle plus vial) above the row of humans.

Medicine

Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them

Rowan Moore Gerety

Perseverance’s Selfie With ‘Cheyava Falls’

Planetary Science

Mars Sample That May Contain Evidence of Life Might Never Come Home

Jonathan O'Callaghan

A woman leans in to kiss a child

Health

Postpartum Depression Gets a Fast-Acting Fix

Marla Broadfoot

Digital illustration of a hand holding a human skull surrounded by text boxes

Artificial Intelligence

Can Digital Ghosts Help Us Heal?

David Berreby

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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

Close up illustration of a human eye

Neuroscience

The Brain Science of Elusive ‘Aha! Moments’

John Kounios, Yvette Kounios

Design of a blue tech-like background with a brain in the center.

Artificial Intelligence

Building Intelligent Machines Helps Us Learn How Our Brain Works

George Musser

Illustration of a person on a hospital bed having an out of body experience within a hospital setting

Neuroscience

Lifting the Veil on Near-Death Experiences

Rachel Nuwer

Illustration of a cell, with the Earth at the center of it

Neuroscience

How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside World

György Buzsáki

Human faces lots of eyes colorful waves

Psychiatry

New Treatments Are Rewriting Our Understanding of Schizophrenia

Diana Kwon

Illustration of a head covered in testing equipment, and a smaller figure of a woman reaching up to touch the head.

Sleep

The New Science of Controlling Lucid Dreams

Michelle Carr

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Podcasts

An image of a person holding their bloated stomach with a pile of plates in front of them on a table with food scraps left on them signifying the end of a large meal

November 19, 2025

How to Keep Your Gut Happy This Holiday Season

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura, Jeffery DelViscio

An illustration of an email icon in a pixelated style on a white background.

InternetNovember 17, 2025

The Human Network behind a Digital Time Capsule

Kendra Pierre-Louis, David M. Ewalt, Jeffery DelViscio, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

An illustration of a row of syringes with a rainbow of colorful liquid in them standing up on their points in a row with a peach colored background.

CancerNovember 14, 2025

How mRNA Vaccines Could Transform Cancer Treatment

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rowan Moore Gerety, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura, Jeffery DelViscio

An illustration of a skull turning into ones and zeros that flow in lines into a machine learning model.

Artificial IntelligenceNovember 12, 2025

How AI Is Transforming the Grieving Process

Kendra Pierre-Louis, David Berreby, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

A spiral dollop of mayonnaise on a white background with the words overlaid on the mayo reading "the great mayo debate"

PsychologyNovember 10, 2025

What Food Texture Teaches Us about Perception, Culture and Language

Rachel Feltman, Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura, Jeffery DelViscio

Popular Stories

A raccoon sits in a round metal trash can looking up and directly at the camera

EvolutionNovember 14, 2025

Raccoons Are Showing Early Signs of Domestication

City-dwelling raccoons seem to be evolving a shorter snout—a telltale feature of our pets and other domesticated animals

Marina Wang

Perseverance’s Selfie With ‘Cheyava Falls’

Planetary ScienceNovember 18, 2025

Mars Sample That May Contain Evidence of Life Might Never Come Home

NASA spent years and billions of dollars collecting Martian samples to bring home. Now they might be stranded

Jonathan O'Callaghan

Illustration of a row of human figures (minimialist in style—just outlines, even stick figures), each in a different rainbow color, with a row of vaccines (eg needle plus vial) above the row of humans.

MedicineNovember 18, 2025

Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them

Vaccines based on mRNA can be tailored to target a cancer patient’s unique tumor mutations. But crumbling support for cancer and mRNA vaccine research has endangered this promising therapy

Rowan Moore Gerety

A white sign is held by a man with his back to viewer in from of capitol steps crowd.

The SciencesNovember 13, 2025

Jeffrey Epstein E-mails Reveal Depth of Ties to High-Profile Scientists

A trove of e-mails from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released by a congressional committee on Wednesday

Dan Vergano

Dot plot shows percentage of total kilometers traveled on foot and bicycle across cities in the 15 top countries for walking and cycling. Dots are shown for the median, mean, 25th and 75th percentiles, and more outlying cities within each country.

EngineeringNovember 14, 2025

These are the World's Best Cities for Walking and Cycling

Data from 11,587 cities show that, rain or shine, some places are just better for bikes and pedestrians

Jesse Greenspan

Digital illustration of a hand holding a human skull surrounded by text boxes

Artificial IntelligenceNovember 18, 2025

Can Digital Ghosts Help Us Heal?

What can AI “griefbots” do for those in mourning?

David Berreby

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