Scientific American

Scientists are trying to decode why humpback whales can be observed hanging around with their mouth open, with no apparent explanation

Everything about a Greenland shark’s life is slow: their heart beats about once every 12 seconds; they swim at an average speed of just a foot per second; they grow at a sluggish rate of just one centimeter (0.4 inch) a year; and they don’t reach sexual maturity until their 150th birthday. The sluggish living makes sense for steely behemoths that live comfortably into their 200s and possible to 4…

On Monday the Supreme Court paused a ruling by a federal appeals court that prevented health care providers from prescribing mifepristone by telemedicine, setting the stage for further action from the nation’s highest court

Three 2026 Breakthrough Prize winners reflect on developing Luxturna, a gene therapy that treats blindness caused by rare inherited eye diseases

A look at what makes scorpions so deadly, why there’s hope for preeclampsia and how President Trump is gutting wind energy

This next-generation plane is made to go faster than sound without producing a full sonic boom

The Kardashev scale is an interesting but flawed gauge of a civilization’s growth

Rate limits on Claude and other tools could hint at a deeper squeeze on the chips, power and data centers needed to run advanced AI. Researcher Lennart Heim explains

Tracing how psychedelics have undergone a revival in the U.S. and what the White House’s new psychedelic push means for research

Archaeologists have uncovered almost 3,000 silver coins so far—and more could come to light

The recent measles outbreak in South Carolina sickened nearly 1,000 people before public health officials got it under control. Vaccination can effectively prevent further spread

The NASA administrator’s latest remarks in support of reexamining Pluto’s status come 20 years after the orb was downgraded to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union

A sub-two-hour marathon has long been seen as a tantalizing benchmark for elite runners—and shoemakers have been in a race to design footwear that can help them get there

A ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had thought of. Experts believe it may have further uses

The space environment—microgravity, extreme temperatures and more—make it near-impossible to truly test a space toilet like Artemis II 's ahead of launch, experts say

Bruce the Kea parrot is missing the upper half of his beak, but he has turned this disability into a weapon to keep subordinates in line

It turns out that salmon exposed to cocaine through water pollution do a lot of swimming—which may not be a good thing

A new study in songbirds might help explain why humans don’t generate many new brain cells, called neurons, as adults

The company says Mythos is too dangerous to release publicly. Cybersecurity experts agree the model's capabilities matter, but not all of them are buying the most alarming claims

Even at a glance, the planets in our solar system are wildly diverse. Huge and small, airless and densely packed with atmosphere, they have a wide range of characteristics distinguishing them. But if I was backed into a corner, which one would I choose as the oddest of them all? Easy: Venus is the weirdest planet in the solar system. There’s a reason we call it Earth’s evil twin. For reasons that…