60-second Science

Along with an expert, we take you into some of nature's most monstrous storms. 

The James Webb Space Telescope is giving us our first glimpse of stars in the early universe.

In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she?

The party drug MDMA could soon be approved for treating people with severe PTSD.

Where is it coming from? How long will it last? What's in the smoke? Whose health is at risk? How do you clean your own air?

Terror birds were the grizzly bears of birds, the great white sharks of the land, Jack the Ripper but with feathers. They were also truly fascinating.

Officially, these prehistoric birds are the dromornithids, but everyone who studies them calls them thunderbirds—and for good reason.

The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate.

The fossil was a prehistoric bird called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross. 

James Rothman shared The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2010 for discovering the molecular basis of neurotransmitter release. How did a biochemist come to win such a prestigious prize in neuroscience?

What you pay for tests, vaccines, and medicine will change

From North America to South Asia, summer heat waves are becoming longer, stronger and more frequent with climate change.

From the technology upsetting jobs and causing intellectual property issues to models making up fake answers to questions, here’s why we’re concerned about generative AI.

More sustainable ways of removing persistent chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from the environment are on the horizon.

We learn the story of “Ella,” a patient with 12 different personalities, or “parts,” and of her therapist, who helped her form a peaceful community—many selves in one body and mind.

Two SciAm editors duke it out to see if wormholes and multiverses could in fact exist.

Parrot nestlings spend time stringing together jumbled mixtures of sound—a rehearsal for more adult conversations  

Recent rulings on the abortion pill cite the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law that’s still on the books

Vernal pools are safe havens for creatures such as fairy shrimp, and they have lived through the end of the dinosaurs, the breakup of Pangaea and multiple ice ages. But humans are paving them over.

Inside a vault at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles lies a microscopic population of immense value—the repository for vernal pool fairy shrimp.