Scientific American

A colorful close-up of whorls and tendrils of gas and dust in the Helix Nebula

AstronomyJanuary 21, 2026

New JWST images reveal Helix Nebula’s knots with stunning clarity

A fresh look at the Helix Nebula captures new details of the cycle of stellar life and death

Joseph Howlett

A brown tower juts up from a green landscape with mountains and clouds in the sky in the background

PaleontologyJanuary 21, 2026

Mystery tower fossils may come from a newly discovered kind of life

Cody Cottier

The outlines of hands in brown with narrowed finger tips on cave rock

AnthropologyJanuary 21, 2026

Oldest cave art ever found discovered in Indonesia

K. R. Callaway

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 crew returns to Ellington Field’s Guppy Hangar in Houston on January 16, 2026. From left to right is Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui.

Space ExplorationJanuary 21, 2026

Crew-11 astronauts reflect on ISS medical evacuation and future of human spaceflight

Claire Cameron

GamesJanuary 21, 2026

Spellements: Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Emma R. Hasson

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This is a gif animation made up of false-colour images taken by ESA’s Proba-3 mission and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Against a dark background, the Sun’s disc is shown in dark orange, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. A thin halo of yellow light surrounds the Sun, giving it a luminous outline against the dark background of space. This yellow outline shows the Sun’s inner corona, as captured by Proba-3. Also in yellow, three solar prominence eruptions are visible, resembling bright yellow wave-like outburst extending outwards from the Sun. First, we can see a smaller one in the top right corner, followed by a larger one in the top left and a third one in the bottom right. The whole animation lasts about 4 seconds and plays in a loop.

AstrophysicsJanuary 21, 2026

Watch three solar prominences erupt in epic video

Meghan Bartels

Flying pipistrelle bat on mostly black background, some vegetation

AnimalsJanuary 21, 2026

‘Bat accelerator’ unlocks new clues to how these animals navigate

Jackie Flynn Mogensen

NASA Space Exploration Insignia at the John F Kennedy Space Center Cape Canaveral Florida

Space & PhysicsJanuary 21, 2026

NASA quietly ends financial support for planetary science groups

Jackie Flynn Mogensen

The silhouette of a white-tailed deer poses in front of a sunset on a grassy hill

AnimalsJanuary 21, 2026

The forest may be glowing—at least to deer

Anirban Mukhopadhyay

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February 2026 Issue

Abstract image of a brain

Consciousness

Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science

Allison Parshall

A series of colorful hexagon data plots on a dark background

Consciousness

Your guide to 29 wildly different theories of consciousness

Allison Parshall, Jen Christiansen

Image from JWST of a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08

Astronomy

When will we see the universe’s first stars?

José María Diego Rodríguez

mirror life conceptual illustration

Biology

Deadly ‘reverse’ cells can destroy us unless scientists stop them

Vaughn S. Cooper

A woman in a safety suit cleans objects in a storage facility

Culture

The hidden threat eating away at museum treasures

Elizabeth Anne Brown

Illustration of a time capsule pill growing underground within tree roots

Geology

Can a time capsule outlast geology?

Peter Brannen

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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

Photographs of 3D-printed shapes show soft cells derived from space filling polyhedra. Blue is derived from a truncated octahedron, pink is from a hexagonal prism and green is from a cube.

Mathematics

Mathematicians Discover a New Kind of Shape That’s All over Nature

Elise Cutts

Many discrete loops. Each looks like a close shape made of a continuous black line drawn in 3D space.

Mathematics

Mathematicians’ Favorite Shapes Hold the Key to Big Mathematical Mysteries

Rachel Crowell, Violet Frances

Colorful abstract illustration

Neurology

How Squishy Math Is Revealing Doughnuts in the Brain

Kelsey Houston-Edwards

Jar full of gumballs

Cognition

Babies Are Born with an Innate Number Sense

Jacob Beck, Sam Clarke

Pool balls inside a roulette and a group of people coming out of half open ball shells on the ground.

Mathematics

Citizens’ Assemblies Are Upgrading Democracy: Fair Algorithms Are Part of the Program

Ariel Procaccia

Illustration of geometric pieces.

Mathematics

Inside Mathematicians’ Search for the Mysterious ‘Einstein Tile’

Craig S. Kaplan

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Podcasts

An illustration of a man standing on a platform carved out of a stone head with a staircase of smaller stone heads leading up towards a light

January 21, 2026

Consciousness explained? What brains, AI and dream states reveal

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

Illustration of smoke coming out of a smoke stack

Public HealthJanuary 19, 2026

EPA’s pollution rule change worries experts, cancer survival hits milestone, and astronauts evacuate the ISS

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Andrea Thompson, Sushmita Pathak, Alex Sugiura

An image of oil refinery in Venezuela near a body of water.

Climate ChangeJanuary 16, 2026

Venezuela, Oil and a Warming Planet: What’s at Stake

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

Illustration of a bottle of cooking oil placed on a wooden surface

DietJanuary 14, 2026

How Seed Oils Became Controversial—And What the Science Really Says

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Sushmita Pathak, Alex Sugiura

A woodpecker standing on snow.

Public HealthJanuary 12, 2026

How Woodpeckers Peck with Power, Why Flu Is Spiking, and What AI and Robots Mean for Tech’s Future

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Eric Sullivan, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

Discussions

Do you think a "brain in a vat," cut off from the body and outside world, could still be conscious?

3View the Discussion

What are some signs of smarts in the animals in your lives, and do you think animals have more intelligence than we give them credit for?

6View the Discussion

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Popular Stories

A brown cow sits in a meadow holding a stick in her mouth

AnimalsJanuary 19, 2026

A tool-using cow is challenging what we know about farm animal intelligence

A pet cow named Veronika uses a tool in a surprisingly sophisticated way—possibly because she has been allowed to live her best life

Kate Wong

A brown tower juts up from a green landscape with mountains and clouds in the sky in the background

PaleontologyJanuary 21, 2026

Mystery tower fossils may come from a newly discovered kind of life

Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees—and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science

Cody Cottier

mirror life conceptual illustration

BiologyJanuary 20, 2026

Deadly ‘reverse’ cells can destroy us unless scientists stop them

Researchers are close to making “reversed” cells that may wipe us off the planet

Vaughn S. Cooper

The outlines of hands in brown with narrowed finger tips on cave rock

AnthropologyJanuary 21, 2026

Oldest cave art ever found discovered in Indonesia

Beating the previous record for the oldest known cave artwork by at least 15,000 years, a hand stencil in an Indonesian cave might shed light on when early humans migrated to Australia

K. R. Callaway

NASA Space Exploration Insignia at the John F Kennedy Space Center Cape Canaveral Florida

Space & PhysicsJanuary 21, 2026

NASA quietly ends financial support for planetary science groups

The U.S. space agency will quit funding several independent science advisory groups this year

Jackie Flynn Mogensen

Abstract image of a brain

ConsciousnessJanuary 20, 2026

Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science

Will brain science deliver answers about consciousness or hit another wall?

Allison Parshall

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