Imagining Science

Imagining…

Where Science Meets Creative Writing

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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.

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For Today’s Inspiration

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    Launched nearly 50 years ago in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 on Wednesday, Nov. 18 will have traveled one light-day from Earth, which is more than 16 billion miles (25.9 billion kilometers). Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object, and any light from Earth would take 24 hours to reach the spacecraft. NASA will highlight

  • NASA to Welcome Expedition 74 Astronauts Home at Space Center Houston

    NASA will welcome home the Expedition 74 crew during a public event at Space Center Houston following their return from a long-duration mission aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams; ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud‑Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will share mission

    • In This Issue

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 44, November 2026. <br/>

    • Origami state machine with time-varying magnetic fields

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 44, November 2026. <br/>SignificanceMultistable mechanical systems can encode information and functionality through transitions between discrete states. A key challenge consists of reliably programming such systems to a target state without prior knowledge of the current state. …