January 5, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Wegovy Weight-Loss Pills Are Now Available in the U.S.—Here’s What That Means The first GLP-1 pills for weight loss are hitting U.S. pharmacies. But how will they be prescribed? …
‘Switches’ in our DNA that affect gene activity in cells could be crucial to understanding and possibly treating Alzheimer’s disease, with researchers identifying more than 150 control signals in specialized brain cells called astrocytes. Astrocytes provide essential support to a …
Sahelanthropus fossils (centre) compared with a chimpanzee (left) and a human (right) Wiliams et al., Sci. Adv. 12, eadv0130 A long-running and bitterly fought dispute over whether the earliest known hominin had a knuckle-walking gait, like chimpanzees, or walked upright, …
New results from the MicroBooNE experiment rule out the existence of a sterile neutrino, reshaping how scientists think about long-standing neutrino anomalies. After many years of investigation, researchers working on the Micro Booster Neutrino Experiment (MicroBooNE) have concluded that a …
Scientists are continuing to strengthen the case that a fragmented comet exploded in Earth’s atmosphere nearly 13,000 years ago. This event may have played a role in the sudden disappearance of mammoths, mastodons, and many other large Ice Age animals, …
In a New York operating room one day in October 2025, doctors made medical history by transplanting a genetically modified pig kidney into a living patient as part of a clinical trial. The kidney had been engineered to mimic human …
Earth is surrounded by human-made debris that orbits our planet. The problem is worsening every year, and 2025 was no different. Space debris experts say nearly 130 million pieces of orbital junk are zipping around our planet: high-speed leftovers from …
Spacecraft assembly facilities at Kennedy Space Center are scrubbed to near-sterility, blasted with ultraviolet light, and flooded with industrial disinfectants. Yet when researchers sequenced bacteria collected during the Phoenix Mars lander’s assembly, they found something unexpected: 26 entirely new species, …
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Watching the aurora borealis (in the Northern Hemisphere) or aurora australis (in the Southern Hemisphere) is unforgettable. Photographing them is on a whole other level. Capturing …
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Standing in the middle of a field, we can easily forget that we live on a round planet. We’re so small in comparison to the Earth that from our point …