In sci-fi, AI can navigate the unknowns and — ideally — keep human travelers safe. But it’s not intelligent enough to do that yet.
Year: 2026
See the first x-rays of humans taken in space
Equipping spacecraft with x-ray machines could boost safety for long-duration spaceflights—like a crewed mission to Mars
Astronomers just accidentally spotted the faintest exoplanet ever seen from Earth
Beta Pictoris d is more than twice the size of Jupiter, but it is a baby compared to its humongous neighbors
The Perseid meteor shower aligns with a total solar eclipse this year—here’s how to see it
Skygazers are in for a treat in August, as one of the most spectacular meteor showers coincides with a total solar eclipse
August's solar eclipse inspires science involving jets, balloons and Einstein’s general theory of relativity
Solar eclipses are a rare and brief opportunity for scientists to gather data on everything from the physics of the sun to air pressure in […]
Allocentric teleoperation for variable perspective multirobot coordination
Science Robotics, Volume 11, Issue 116, July 2026.
Erratum for the Research Article “Observing a robot peer’s failures facilitates students’ classroom learning”
Science Robotics, Volume 11, Issue 116, July 2026.
Agile perceptive multiskill locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wild
Science Robotics, Volume 11, Issue 116, July 2026.
A new sort of Alzheimer’s drug shows glimmers of promise
Clinical trial results show an experimental drug lowered tau levels in the brain and slowed some memory loss, but the data came with a surprise […]
Experimental immune therapy shows promise against deadly childhood brain cancer
Several children who had aggressive recurrent brain tumors remained disease-free years after this treatment, according to an early-stage trial
NASA’s Hubble reveals a black hole hiding inside a massive star cluster in the Milky Way
Scientists have long suspected that this star cluster was a hotspot for a certain kind of black hole. But for decades, they had been unable […]
Prepare for dangerous air pollution in the Northeast, thanks to Minnesota wildfires
Smoke from northern Minnesota and western Ontario wildfires is pouring over the Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and Northeast, bringing record levels of hazardous air pollution to […]
T. rex fossil named ‘Gus’ becomes the most expensive dinosaur sold at auction
This massive dinosaur skeleton sold for more than $50.1 million on Tuesday
Did scientists just create synthetic life?
The SpudCell certainly resembles a living cell, but a key structure inside the cell falls short of the real thing
A new map traces the sky’s water highways
Atmospheric rivers bring heavy rain and floods, but if they don’t come around, it could mean drought. A new global map reveals little-known pathways.
A quasar breaks the record for most distant supermassive black hole
The Euclid space telescope discovery could help researchers understand how black holes grew so massive so quickly in the early universe.
ChatGPT just proved another 50-year-old math conjecture
What’s the secret to prompting an AI to solve math problems that have left humans stumped? Tell it to believe in itself
Here's the deal with 'corn sweat'—it's not all actually corn's fault
Corn has taken the heat for recent Midwest summer humidity—unjustly, according to corn experts
We finally know the name of a Maya mathematician
The signature of Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” was found inscribed in a 1,000-year-old chamber beneath present-day Guatemala
Why have there been so many record-breaking heat waves this summer?
Record-breaking heat waves are beginning to blur together—here’s why and what’s making them so unbearable