Author: Scientific American

Lakes of liquid methane on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, could offer exhilarating—and terrifying—opportunities for otherworldly surfing

Frothy rock floating on the ocean near Papua New Guinea is the sign scientists needed that, hidden from view, an underwater volcano was erupting

Historian Craig Fehrman unpacks the science, politics and human stories behind one of America’s most famous expeditions

David Haskell brings readers through millions of years of botanical history for his latest book, How Flowers Made Our World

Scientists analyzing modern genomes may have found a long-lost branch of the human family tree

Centuries-old DNA that was found in these mummies belongs to an extinct viral lineage of smallpox that was brought across the Atlantic during European colonization of the Americas

The U.S. has been pummeled with heat waves this summer. Here’s how hot overnight temperatures can get in the way of a good night’s rest—in 3 charts

Space agencies around the globe are coordinating missions to visit the asteroid Apophis during a close encounter with Earth in 2029

he extreme conditions of atomic bomb explosions create “uncontrolled microexperiments” that, in Hiroshima, forged a never-before-seen metallic alloy

A newly discovered change in ribosomal RNA makes protein production more precise, potentially safeguarding these cephalopods’ complex nervous systems