Parallel universes are a staple of science fiction, and it’s no wonder. They allow us to explore the question, “What if?” in a way that lets us step completely outside of the world we know, rather than question how that world might have turned out differently. For cosmologists, the question isn’t “What if the South [...]

ScienceSeeker Awards have been announced earlier today. If you are not sure what this is, ScienceSeeker is the main portal for collecting, connecting and filtering science writing online, especially on science blogs (Note: it is a project of ScienceOnline of which I am one of the co-founders and co-chairmen). It is also the main tool [...]

While many of us strive to live healthy lives, the task can be daunting and the information overwhelming. Should we be more concerned with our diet or with keeping our weight down? How important is exercise? What kinds of diseases should we really be worried about? In this eBook, “Eat, Move, Think: Living Healthy,” we’ve [...]

Monday, May 13, 2013 | 7:00 P.M.–8:30 P.M. The New York Academy of Sciences For more information about the event click here. School has traditionally been about teaching kids new knowledge and skills. Most people have long believed that each child’s temperament and capacity for learning are more or less inborn—or at least, not the [...]

One of the pleasures of Scientific American is how very international it is, just like science itself: In addition to the domestic (U.S. and Canada) and global English editions, the magazine is translated into 14 languages. Scientific American Mind also appears in about half a dozen. Last week, representatives of nearly all of them gathered [...]

Why can you vividly recall the day your father took you to your first baseball game many years ago, but you can’t remember where you just put the car keys? We tend not to think about it much, but memory is the seat of consciousness. The process of how we remember, how we forget, and [...]

Captain Ahab went insane chasing the elusive Moby Dick. Good news: you don’t have to suffer a similar fate. On May 1 at 6:30pm, Scientific American will co-host a whale-themed tweet-up and reception in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The event is timed to coincide with the recent [...]

Since the Industrial Revolution our civilization has depended on fossil fuels to generate energy—first it was coal; then petroleum. But there are two problems: the first is that petroleum isn’t an infinite resource; and the second is that burning coal and oil puts billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, trapping heat. Temperatures [...]

More than 30,000 people visited the White House for the 135th annual Easter Egg Roll on Monday—and I spent several happy hours there myself doing science activities with dozens of kids and their families with the Lawrence Hall of Science. If you couldn’t make it to Washington, D.C., you can find instructions to make the [...]

An infant born in the U.S. today will probably live to see his or her 78th birthday, a 20- year-plus increase over the average lifespan a century ago. As living well into our 80s and 90s becomes more attainable, how many more years can humanity expect to gain going forward? The two main physiological barriers [...]