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
- I Am Artemis: Peter Rossoni
Listen to this audio excerpt from Peter Rossoni, Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System flight manager: As a child, Peter Rossoni watched the Apollo missions launch with his family. In April 2026, he became a part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, helping enable communications as astronauts journeyed around the Moon. Rossoni’s path to NASA began
- The Day of the Trifid Nebula
This shimmering region of star-formation, a close-up of the Trifid Nebula about 5,000 light-years from Earth, was captured in intricate detail by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in an image released on April 20, 2026. The colors in Hubble’s visible light image, which marks the 36th anniversary of the mission’s launch on April 24, are reminiscent of an underwater
- Widening Channels and Westerly Winds Together Formed Earth’s Strongest Current
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current could only develop once wind patterns aligned with new ocean passages 34 million years ago, a new study suggests.
- How Space Plasma Can Bend the Laser of Gravitational Wave Detectors
A new study reveals how and to what extent laser beams are bent during propagation through space plasma in TianQin, a geocentric space-borne gravitational wave detector.
- Thousands of shady ads sell paper authorship for cash, large-scale investigation finds
Results are “only the tip of the iceberg” of shadowy paper-mill marketplace
- Octopus ‘krakens’ as large as semi-trucks stalked ancient seas
Giant cephalopods may have rivaled marine reptiles as apex predators during the age of the dinosaurs
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 16, April 2026. <br/>
- Sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics and Koopman operators with Shallow Recurrent Decoder Networks
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 16, April 2026. <br/>SignificanceWe present sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics with shallow recurrent decoders (SINDy-SHRED), which jointly solves the sensing, model reduction and model identification problem with simple implementation, efficient computation, and …
- The memory dealer of Old Jeddah
Nature, Published online: 24 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01071-0A taste of freedom.
- Brain tissue near tumours is loaded with plastic
Nature, Published online: 24 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01281-6Relatively high levels of micro- and nanoplastics around brain tumours might indicate breakdown of the blood–brain barrier.