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
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Progress Without Morals
A scientist is trying to harness microbial properties to develop a fantastic tool. He believes he can; but should he?
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For Today’s Inspiration
- Space Station Research Contributes to Artemis II
Have you ever heard the saying, “You have to learn how to walk before you can run?” The same can be true in human space exploration. To push capabilities further and ensure safe, successful missions, NASA must test ideas and solve challenges ahead of time. While Earth-based research and engineering helps NASA progress through various
- Icy Hudson River
During a stretch of frigid weather in late January 2026, ice choked the Hudson River along Manhattan’s western shore. The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 captured this image of the wintry landscape around midday on Jan. 28. This image uses representational color to distinguish ice (light blue) from open water and snow. Vegetation appears red. Much of
- Why Are Thunderstorms More Intense Over Land Than Ocean?
A new perspective on convective instability sheds light on the factors controlling intensity in the rising motions that produce precipitation, and occasionally thunder and lightning, over land.
- Coastal Wetlands Restoration, Carbon, and the Hidden Role of Groundwater
Coastal wetland restoration offers major carbon benefits, and understanding groundwater processes helps explain how these ecosystems store carbon over the long term.
- A hack-proof internet? Quantum encryption could be the key
Team in China sends data with entangled atoms, neutralizing backdoor hardware threats
- Inside the quest to make a safer football helmet
New energy-absorbing designs and materials have revolutionized the iconic safety device
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 5, February 2026. <br/>
- Quantum benchmarking of high-fidelity noise-biased operations on a detuned Kerr-cat qubit
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 5, February 2026. <br/>SignificanceThe path to practical quantum computing is hindered by the presence of noise, which disrupts fragile quantum information. Recent advances suggest that tailoring quantum hardware to favor certain types of noise can lead to more efficient error …
- My mission to make life more user friendly for the disability community
Nature, Published online: 09 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00389-zInventor Josh Miele says that accelerating change requires uprooting social attitudes about blindness and other disabilities.
- How to stop the survey-taking AI chatbots that threaten to upend social science
Nature, Published online: 09 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00386-2Researchers need new bot-detection strategies that exploit the limits of human reasoning rather than AI weaknesses.