A mathematician may have solved a 250-year-old question about whether every polygon contains a path home

Armed with eclipse glasses, solar binoculars and random kitchen implements, Team Lewin set out to find the best way to look at Aug. 21's total solar eclipse.

Knowing what kind of tick bit you and where you got it can help inform next steps

There Is No Antimemetics Division explores how to survive when memories and meaning are malleable

Earth's ancient climate is written in... ostrich eggshells and stomach oil?

The autism spectrum is big, vibrant and complicated, a new graphic of 39 traits shows

On their voyages to the moon, NASA’s astronauts are finally getting some creature comforts of terrestrial toilets—such as having a door and being able to pee and poop simultaneously

For 20 years, this computational linguistics competition has inspired new generations of innovators in AI and language preservation

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

The number pi emerges from one of the simplest, most symmetric shapes, yet it gives rise to endless complexity. This Pi Day, find out about some of the fascinating places pi pops up and the burning qu...

Mental math shortcuts suggest future STEM performance—and gender is a significant predictor

Scientific American talks to the author of When the Moon Hits Your Eye, one of our best fiction picks for 2025

Here are the 67 books Scientific American staffers couldn’t put down this year, from fantasy epics to gripping nonfiction

Kendra Pierre-Louis steps in as interim host and dives into the science behind why some foods—especially mayonnaise—can gross us out.

After decades of speculation, two writers uncovered the answer to the Kryptos code’s final cipher

It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows

It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows

After nearly 40 years of global efforts, the ozone hole over Antarctica is continuing to heal

AI can transfer strange qualities through seemingly unrelated training—from a love of owls to something more dangerous

The downfall of a long-standing theory in psychology raises a question: How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we literally see the world?

From Miami to Maine, the East Coast is under moderate or high rip current risk advisories because of Hurricane Erin

Though the Fibonacci sequence shows up everywhere in nature, these young mathematicians were surprised to find it in the answer to a variation of the pick-up sticks problem⁠—a nearly two-century-old f...

When she was just 17 years old, Hannah Cairo disproved the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture, breaking a four-decade-old mathematical assumption

Flex your math muscles with this weekend’s brain teaser. Play now.

Astronomers think small space rocks from beyond our solar system routinely strike Earth—but proving it isn’t easy