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Today:
How the 2024 Presidential Election Will Shape Science, Health and the Environment
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris represent very different futures when it comes to science-related policy issues that deeply affect our lives. Scientific American has rounded up the U.S. presidential candidates’ stances on some of the most important of these areas, including health care, reproductive rights, climate change, artificial intelligence, gun violence, nuclear weapons, education and immigration. Each article takes a deep dive, based on expert interviews and scientific consensus, into what a Trump or Harris presidency might mean for each of these issues during the next term—and possibly for years to come.

Top Stories:
The New Science of Diet, Weight and Health
NEWS | 23 May 2026
What humans really evolved to eat, why some people can be heavy but healthy, and what revolutionary weight-loss drugs are teaching us about appetite, pleasure and the brain itself

World:
How AI Is Solving Humanity’s Age-Old Mysteries
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Until now computers have failed to solve mathematical problems. But the AI program AlphaGeometry has succeeded in finding proofs for dozens of theorems from the International Mathematical Olympiad

Current Events:
The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2024
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Scientists are finally getting their hands on enough data to begin to understand how animals react to a total solar eclipse

Sponsored:
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SPONSORED | 23 May 2026
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News Flash:
SpaceX launches Starship V3—the world's most powerful and tallest rocket ever
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Lifting off at around 6:30 P.M. EDT, the flight is the first test of Starship Version 3 (V3). This is the twelfth Starship test and the first demonstration of the rocket in seven months. Fully stacked with its booster, the rocket is 408 feet (124 meters) tall and packing 18 million pounds of thrust, it is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built. Certainly, NASA has a lot riding on SpaceX's Starship. This largely successful demonstration of SpaceX's rocket is a feather in the company's cap as it moves to go public as soon as next month.

Latest:
What is E15 fuel? Why higher-ethanol gasoline could raise summer smog levels
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Most gasoline sold year-round in the U.S. contains 10 percent ethanol, a fuel made from fermented biomass—usually corn—instead of petroleum. What is E15 fuel, and why isn’t it sold during the summer? E15 fuel contains between 10.5 and 15 percent ethanol. About 3,000 gas stations, or 2 percent nationally, are equipped to dispense E15 gas, according to the EPA. This is not the first time that E15 waivers have been issued—E15 sales allowances have occurred every summer since 2022.

Breaking:
NASA dreams of a nuclear power plant on the moon. Here’s why
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Experts questioned both the timing and the scale of the nuclear power plant Duffy is proposing. The U.S. launched the first nuclear reactor to space, the experimental Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power 10A reactor, back in 1965. Let’s start with the bad news: it’s a lot easier to operate a nuclear power plant on Earth. Despite the hurdles that must be overcome, many experts are pretty jazzed about the possibility of a lunar nuclear reactor. And if things get confrontational, nuclear power plants may not be the only territorial markers spacefaring nations put down.

Trending:
Why lawyers keep citing fake cases invented by AI
NEWS | 23 May 2026
In April the Alabama Supreme Court sanctioned an attorney who had filed legal briefs laden with inaccurate citations generated by AI, including numerous references to cases that did not exist. Courtroom proceedings are public, and lawyers face sanctions for false claims, making such errors comparatively easy to track. The pattern emerging across these cases is that people keep trusting AI’s answers even when they know the systems can be wrong. A study published this past February asked participants to complete an image classification task with guidance they were told came from either humans or AI. And as AI improves at many tasks, users may grow less inclined to double-check it at all.

This Just In:
Earth’s molten outer core is behaving in chaotic, unexpected ways
NEWS | 23 May 2026
Earth’s molten outer core is critical to life on our planet. Measurements show that the inner core rotates in an easterly direction, just like Earth itself, but the molten metal of the outer core tends to flow westward. The findings suggest that the large-scale motions of the outer core are far less stable than previously thought. They also indicate that the outer core may be influenced by hidden shifts happening within the inner core. Other data suggest that something was indeed happening within the inner core that may have influenced the change in direction in the outer core, he said.

Today:
Rare Ebola-causing Bundibugyo virus is uniquely challenging to treat. Here’s why
NEWS | 23 May 2026
What is the Bundibugyo virus, and how does it differ from other forms of Ebola-causing viruses? These include the Ebola virus (formerly called the Zaire virus), the species responsible for the biggest and worst Ebola outbreaks, as well as the Sudan virus, the Taï Forest virus and the Bundibugyo virus. Compared with the Ebola virus, Bundibugyo is a relatively rare species of orthoebolavirus, says Elke Mühlberger, a professor of virology, immunology and microbiology at Boston University. The Bundibugyo virus, by contrast, seems to cause milder but still severe disease. Researchers are developing vaccines specifically for the Bundibugyo virus, and early candidates have been shown to be highly effective in animal trials.

Top Stories:
Quantum computing is reaching its make-or-break moment
NEWS | 23 May 2026
This location is the main fabrication plant for quantum computing company Rigetti Computing in California; each refrigeration tank contains one of Rigetti’s top-of-the-line quantum processing units. Quantum computing is reaching its make-or-break moment: Scientists hope that in the next few decades they’ll be able to scale up today’s quantum systems to the size needed to make real breakthroughs and finally beat classical machines at useful tasks. Similarly, it’s not enough to say a quantum computer is a computer that takes advantage of quantum phenomena in its operation. Tunable superpositions such as this one are what make a quantum computer quantum. Although there is no way to completely halt decoherence, there is a way to compensate for some errors within quantum computers by using another celebrated result in theoretical quantum computing: quantum error correction.

World:
Which problems will quantum computers solve—and when?
NEWS | 23 May 2026
“It’s an exciting time because people are fielding quantum computers with hundreds and thousands of qubits,” says Nobel Prize–winning quantum physicist John Martinis, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-founder of quantum hardware company Qolab. So what will quantum computers really be good for—and when? Experts say we are still years away from quantum computers able to handle practical applications that classical computers cannot, which might include breaking common data-encryption schemes, simulating quantum processes for fundamental physics, and designing better drugs and materials. Ekert, however, remains cautious about the longer-term benefits of using quantum AI processors to analyze classical datasets. Where quantum computing and machine learning are already being combined most helpfully, Ekert argues, is in physicists’ use of classical AI to design quantum error-correcting codes and better quantum hardware.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 23 May 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Current Events:
The Riemann hypothesis is a million-dollar math problem hardly anyone is trying to solve
NEWS | 23 May 2026
“So you really don’t care whether the Riemann hypothesis gets solved by a human or AI?” I asked. “An AI that can prove the Riemann hypothesis is not one I’d want to meet.” —Andrew Sutherland, M.I.T. Yet despite the handsome heap of rewards stacked behind it, progress toward the Riemann hypothesis is scarce. The Riemann hypothesis has proved to be a font of surprising connections all over math and beyond to the physical world. To Maynard, the lack of any clear route to solving the Riemann hypothesis is part of what makes the problem so important.