A version of this puzzle originally appeared in the October 1960 issue of Scientific American.

Distance records are an excellent proxy for the state of the art in astronomy. Finding extremely faraway galaxies is hard. In ...

SpaceX is mulling an IPO in 2026. Here’s how that could affect its work with NASA and the push to put humans on Mars ...

Immense progress in gene editing, drug discovery and conservation are just some of the reasons to be cheerful about 2025 ...

Euclid launched in 2023 on a six-year mission to map the cosmos at scale, observing billions of galaxies stretching as far ...

Dynamic mounds made of methane at a depth of some 3,640 meters act like “frozen reefs” for a bizarre array of deep-sea ...

A pill version of the popular GLP-1 weight-loss drug Wegovy has been green-lit for use in the U.S. Here’s what that means for ...

From the first sighting of a colossal squid in the wild to a seriously goofy octopus, 2025 delivered some astounding photos ...

From advancements in male birth control to the science of supplements, Scientific American highlights some of the most ...

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced it would “pause” leases for five large offshore wind farms, imperiling the fast ...

The U.S.’s decision to ban the sale of new foreign-made drones will have far wider-reaching implications than its effect on ...

Romans living in ancient Britain were plagued by intestinal parasites, all of which are spread by fecal contamination ...