Science

It’s time to land a car on Mars. After 6 months of flight, 8 years of planning, and decades of scientific desire, NASA is set to put the Perseverance rover on the surface of the Red Planet. If success comes tomorrow, it will mark the first chapter of an audacious […]

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.

A leopard can’t change its spots, and a zebra can’t change its stripes. But the zebra shark has long delighted ocean divers and aquarium visitors with its ability to transform the white bands it is born with into spots as it grows. Now, the endangered shark is grabbing attention for […]

A genetic analysis of long-extinct Siberian mammoths has nearly doubled the record for the oldest DNA yet sequenced. The genetic material, from a creature that roamed frozen lands some 1.2 million years ago, pushes the study of ancient DNA closer to its theoretical limit—and reveals a new lineage of mammoth.

SAN DIEGO—Twenty days into the new year, cars were entering a parking lot bumper-to-bumper in the shadow of Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres baseball team. Arms waving, attendants directed the cars into three lines, which split into four more, and yelled as though the first pitch had […]

A company has stopped its clinical studies of a promising gene therapy for the blood disorder sickle cell disease after two people who participated developed leukemia-like cancer. Bluebird bio is now investigating whether a virus it uses to deliver a therapeutic gene caused the cancers, reviving old concerns about the […]

Join Scientific American for a conversation about the next steps in humanity’s reconnaissance of Mars. Featuring Casey Dreier, senior space policy adviser at the Planetary Society, and space and physics editor Lee Billings, this deep dive will begin with an overview of NASA’s upcoming Perseverance rover—slated to land on Mars in […]

For planetary scientists, it was the boldest claim in a generation: an unseen extra planet, as much as 10 times the mass of Earth, lurking on the Solar System’s frontier, beyond Neptune. But the claim looks increasingly shaky, after a team of astronomers reported last week that the orbits of […]