A new optical illusion excellently illustrates just how finicky our eyes are when it comes to perceiving colors.

Global temperatures and rain patterns are affected by a climate phenomenon known as El Niño/La Niña.

Last year, Nick Franks published a paper that kicked off an almighty row over the biology of what happens to the brain during sleep (Nat. Neurosci., DOI:10.1038 ...

People are buying helmets, face masks, vests and beds that emit long-wavelength light. Beneath the hype, there is some ...

This podcast was produced for UL Research Institutes by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. We’re surrounded by risks of all sizes, every day.

Every year, math nerds and dessert enthusiasts unite to celebrate Pi Day on March 14, a date whose digits represent the first ...

John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council. The modern science biography must hold back no punches in its mission to represent the subject’s life, equally celebrating their great ...

I study how animal species change over time, especially through partnerships with other living things (called symbiosis). Most of my work focuses on sea creatures like clams, snails, and cockles, but ...

What’s the first thing you do after waking up each morning, before you’ve even gotten out of bed? For many people, it’s checking the weather. For most, this is a thoughtless chore, an unexciting daily ...

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Alan Lightman and Martin Rees’s book, The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and Live (2025), describes the lives of scientists; what inspires them, how they spend their time, how they ...