Scientific American

Neurodiversity illustration. People with different mindsets or psychological features.

BehaviorDecember 6, 2025

Why Are ADHD Rates On the Rise?

More than 1 in 10 children in the U.S. have ADHD, fueling debate over the condition and how to treat it

Helen Pearson, Nature magazine

Illustration of murals of cartoon-like people reading books

OpinionDecember 4, 2025

Scientific American’s Best Nonfiction of 2025

Brianne Kane

Cover of the book Hole In The Sky against a light brown background

BooksDecember 5, 2025

Daniel H. Wilson on Finding a Native Take on Traditional Alien Invasion Stories

Brianne Kane

A rocket blasts off from a launch pad in a plume of exhaust under a clear, sunny sky.

AerospaceDecember 5, 2025

China’s First Reusable Rocket Fails, but the Race Is Just Beginning

Andrew Jones

GamesDecember 6, 2025

Math Puzzle: An Unknown Dimension

Jack Murtagh

HOLIDAY SALE: SAVE ON ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS

Three people sit at a panel for vaccine policy

HealthDecember 5, 2025

CDC Vaccine Panel Scraps Guidance for Universal Hepatitis B Shots at Birth

Lauren J. Young

Digital human face composed of glowing particles connects to futuristic microchip emitting bright data streams

Artificial IntelligenceDecember 6, 2025

Are We Seeing the First Steps Toward AI Superintelligence?

Deni Ellis Béchard

A girl in a pink shirt eats a piece of pizza

HealthDecember 5, 2025

Why Leftover Pizza Might Actually Be Healthier

Tom Lum

Cover of the book Is A River Alive? against a light brown background

BooksDecember 5, 2025

Is a River Alive? A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane on Nature’s Sovereignty

Andrea Gawrylewski

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December 2025 Issue

Plastic bag floating underwater

Sustainability

The Fossil-Fuel Industry Has a Plan to Drown Earth in Plastic

Beth Gardiner

Illustration of a row of human figures (minimialist in style—just outlines, even stick figures), each in a different rainbow color, with a row of vaccines (eg needle plus vial) above the row of humans.

Medicine

Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them

Rowan Moore Gerety

Perseverance’s Selfie With ‘Cheyava Falls’

Planetary Science

Mars Sample That May Contain Evidence of Life Might Never Come Home

Jonathan O'Callaghan

A woman leans in to kiss a child

Health

Postpartum Depression Gets a Fast-Acting Fix

Marla Broadfoot

Digital illustration of a hand holding a human skull surrounded by text boxes

Artificial Intelligence

Can Digital Ghosts Help Us Heal?

David Berreby

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Games

A robot hand reaches toward bubbles with letters in them

Spellements

Create as many words as you can!

Illustration of a hand and multiple numbers against a purple background.

Math Puzzles

Stretch your math muscles with these puzzles.

A robot hand unleashes a swirl of puzzle pieces, crosswords, and circles with numbers and letters

All Games

Science inspired games, puzzles and quizzes

Special Edition

Photographs of 3D-printed shapes show soft cells derived from space filling polyhedra. Blue is derived from a truncated octahedron, pink is from a hexagonal prism and green is from a cube.

Mathematics

Mathematicians Discover a New Kind of Shape That’s All over Nature

Elise Cutts

Many discrete loops. Each looks like a close shape made of a continuous black line drawn in 3D space.

Mathematics

Mathematicians’ Favorite Shapes Hold the Key to Big Mathematical Mysteries

Rachel Crowell, Violet Frances

Colorful abstract illustration

Neurology

How Squishy Math Is Revealing Doughnuts in the Brain

Kelsey Houston-Edwards

Jar full of gumballs

Cognition

Babies Are Born with an Innate Number Sense

Jacob Beck, Sam Clarke

Pool balls inside a roulette and a group of people coming out of half open ball shells on the ground.

Mathematics

Citizens’ Assemblies Are Upgrading Democracy: Fair Algorithms Are Part of the Program

Ariel Procaccia

Illustration of geometric pieces.

Mathematics

Inside Mathematicians’ Search for the Mysterious ‘Einstein Tile’

Craig S. Kaplan

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Podcasts

A silhouette of a woman holding her head with one hand and a child in her other arm in black and white

December 5, 2025

Is There New Hope for Treating Postpartum Depression?

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Jeffery DelViscio

Four different book covers on a purple background with a plant with rings.

Book RecommendationsDecember 3, 2025

Scientific American Shares Its First-Ever Best Fiction and Nonfiction Books of the Year

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Brianne Kane, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura, Jeffery DelViscio

A wild turkey walking on a wooden deck of a house.

ConservationNovember 26, 2025

How Wild Turkeys Made a Comeback from Near Extinction

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

A raccoon sitting on a blue ledge with a city skyline in the background.

Climate ChangeNovember 24, 2025

Tamer Raccoons, COP30 Recap, New Fluoride Research

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

A greatly magnified view of a small, hollow marine creature covered in spikes and holes

TechnologyNovember 21, 2025

Nanocosmos Shows Nature’s Invisible Art

Kendra Pierre-Louis, Jeffery DelViscio

Popular Stories

An artist's depiction of a fancy bright star over a simple horizon.

AstronomyDecember 5, 2025

Have Astronomers Found the True ‘Star of Bethlehem’?

A scientist has identified a possible astronomical explanation for the Star of Bethlehem, as described in the Bible

Meghan Bartels

Digital human face composed of glowing particles connects to futuristic microchip emitting bright data streams

Artificial IntelligenceDecember 6, 2025

Are We Seeing the First Steps Toward AI Superintelligence?

Today’s leading AI models can already write and refine their own software. The question is whether that self-improvement can ever snowball into true superintelligence

Deni Ellis Béchard

skunk

HealthDecember 4, 2025

Man Dies of Rabies after Receiving Infected Kidney Transplant

A man has passed away after he received a kidney transplant from a person who had died with undiagnosed rabies, according to U.S. public health officials

Claire Cameron

A raccoon sits in a round metal trash can looking up and directly at the camera

EvolutionNovember 14, 2025

Raccoons Are Showing Early Signs of Domestication

City-dwelling raccoons seem to be evolving a shorter snout—a telltale feature of our pets and other domesticated animals

Marina Wang

Illustration of murals of cartoon-like people reading books

OpinionDecember 4, 2025

Scientific American’s Best Nonfiction of 2025

The 10 best nonfiction books of 2025, from the history of replaceable body parts to our AI future

Brianne Kane

Amoeba blobs moving around

MicrobiologyDecember 5, 2025

Newly Discovered ‘Fire Amoeba’ Pushes the Boundaries of Life on Earth

It was thought that complex cells couldn’t survive above a certain temperature, but a tiny amoeba has proven that assumption wrong

Andrea Thompson

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