60-second Science

Here’s how scientists are planning on getting underground fungi data from space using satellites.

Atmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. To find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. And the details are in the dirt.

Like us, plants and fungi have complex economies. By burning fossil fuels, we’ve been devaluing their currency.

Drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic might help people tackle substance abuse as well as shed pounds.

Scientists used a smoking machine—complete with a 3-D-printed mouthpiece—to figure out how to get the most cannabinoid per puff. 

New AI technology predicts hit songs—by listening to someone’s body. 

Here’s what’s behind the A.I technology that has worried so many actors—including something called “the orb.”

A sleep researcher who studies what dreams can tell us about the possible onset of some mental disorders believes lucid dreamers might hold a lot of answers in their head.

Here’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb.

Inflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress

Here’s how large language models, or LLMs, actually work. 

Very small delays in swing jazz point to our evolution as a supremely auditory species.

New research has discovered that wildfire smoke hurts these primates’ voice—and health.

ChatGPT and other AI programs can offer medical advice. But how good are they?

The famous climate pattern El Niño could usher in a new hottest year on record and will have domino effects on the world’s weather.

John O’Keefe shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 for discovering that neurons in the hippocampus encode an animal’s location and create a cognitive map for navigation. This podcast was produced for the Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors.

Researchers, using the galaxy as a detector, believe they have detected gravitational waves from monster black holes for the first time.

Toxic dust plagues marginalized communities on the shores of this disappearing salt lake.

Desert ants living in the featureless salt plains of Tunisia count their steps and erect tall entrances at their nests to find their way back home.

Your body has a secret cooling method, and scientists explain how to use it.