Imagining…
Where Science Meets Creative Writing
Find a story within the topics above
How can we look at fossils and understand what creatures roamed the Earth millions of years ago?
How can we predict the behavior of materials deep within planetary interiors?
How can we reverse humanity’s impact on the global climate?
How can we predict habitats for life on other planets?
Doing impactful, innovative research requires training our brain to imagine the elusive unknown, even when bounded by scientific evidence. Now, more than ever in the history of human civilization, there is a pressing need to exercise our imagination muscles. Writing scientific fiction while accounting for the real science is a powerful way to do just that—to learn what is possible, what is probable, how we can change the future, and what our responsibility is to the future generation of our species.
Most Recent Stories
-
-
Progress Without Morals
A scientist is trying to harness microbial properties to develop a fantastic tool. He believes he can; but should he?
-
For Today’s Inspiration
- Louisiana Students Loft Payloads from NASA Balloon Facility in Texas
Every spring in Palestine, Texas, the wide-open fields around NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility fill with students and faculty from across Louisiana. They arrive carrying sensors, laptops, and carefully engineered payloads they have spent months preparing. The goal is to send their experiments to the edge of space and return with meaningful data, while reflecting
- Guinea-Bissau Tidal Waters
Twice each day, tides ebb and flow through a maze of sandy channels, mudflats, and mangrove forests that flank the 88 islands and islets of Guinea-Bissau’s Bijagós Archipelago (Arquipélago dos Bijagós in Portuguese). Seen from above in this image from Nov. 28, 2025, the process leads to stark changes to the landscape: around low tide, intertidal mudflats and sandflats
- The Definitive Guide to the TEX86 Paleothermometer
A new review article summarizes our knowledge of how microbial lipids archived in marine sediments record ancient ocean temperatures and outlines challenges and next steps for the TEX86 proxy.
- Work-Life Balance
These 10 scientists carry their curiosity outside their nine-to-fives.
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 30, July 2026. <br/>
- Antimalarial cytoskeletal targeting with broad apicomplexan activity
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 30, July 2026. <br/>SignificanceMalaria parasites are becoming resistant to current medicines, creating an urgent need for drugs that work in new ways. This study shows that blocking parasite myosin A, a motor protein needed for movement and host-cell invasion, can block…
- ‘A waste of time for all of us’: caught in the crossfire of the peer-review wars
Nature, Published online: 03 August 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01360-8Review mills — researchers who write fake referee reports with coercive citation requests — are setting off a war in academic publishing. What happens to those caught in the middle?
- Cancer-fighting antibodies with a one-two punch take aim at tumours
Nature, Published online: 03 August 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02398-4Bispecific antibodies, which bind to two targets, are sweeping into the clinic and are prompting even more elaborate versions.