Scientific American

What do acorns have to do with Lyme disease? New work shows their numbers can predict booms in the tick-carried ailment almost two years in advance.

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NASA is planning to launch a new rover, PROMISE, to the moon as soon as 2028. Promise will help establish the foundations of the agency’s human-crewed Moon Base—here’s what to know

sciam.com/article/nasa-r…

Finding a needle in a haystack is a metaphor for a task that is nigh impossible. But here at Scientific American, we wanted to know: Exactly how hard is it, really, to find a needle in a haystack?

sciam.com/article/the-ma…

Physicists were surprised to discover that quantum effects prevent materials from ever being fully transparent.

sciam.com/article/nothin…

Can you figure out a secret formula—a polynomial with nonnegative whole number coefficients—by plugging in just two numbers? You can choose your second number based on the result of the first query. (Don’t worry, there’s a hint.)

sciam.com/article/math-p…