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
- Solving Asteroid Bennu’s Mysteries
These X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans released on March 17, 2026, give us a glimpse inside asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples; these networks solved a mystery that baffled NASA for years. When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft first approached asteroid Bennu in 2018, scientists expected to see smooth, sandy beach-like surfaces. Instead, they
- Asteroid Bennu’s Rugged Surface Baffled NASA, We Finally Know Why
In one of the biggest surprises of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, its target asteroid, Bennu, turned out to be a jagged, rugged world covered in large boulders, with few of the smooth patches of sandy or pebbly material scientists had expected based on observations with Earth-based instruments. Bennu’s looks were quite deceiving, and until now, scientists struggled to figure out why.
- How Frozen Ground Controls Water in a Warming World
Frozen ground acts like a hidden underground dam. As it thaws, water pathways shift, changing rivers, wetlands, ecosystems, and infrastructure across cold regions.
- Scientists Discover South America’s First Space Glass Fields, in Brazil
Tektites, rare natural glasses formed by ancient asteroid impacts, were found stretching across more than 900 kilometers of the country’s interior.
- Relic of long-vanished ice sheet holds clues to ancient climate
Glacial ice melting out of Alaska’s eroding coastline offers a glimpse into a lost climate history
- Autophagolysosomal exocytosis inverts Src kinase onto the cell surface in cancer | Science
Overexpression of the proto-oncogene Src is common to a wide variety of cancers. In this work, we found that Src is noncanonically translocated and inverted onto the cell surface in cancer, both in vitro and in vivo. We identified autophagolysosomal …
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 10, March 2026. <br/>
- The geometry of Nature’s stingers is universal due to stochastic mechanical wear
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 10, March 2026. <br/>SignificancePointed objects such as stingers, horns, and teeth have been observed to exhibit a paraboloid geometry at the tip. Interestingly, this tip geometry is not exclusive to biological structures; it is also found in abiotic forms as disparate as …
- AI is programmed to hijack human empathy — we must resist that
Nature, Published online: 17 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00834-zAs artificial intelligence begins to mimic consciousness with uncanny skill, we need design norms and laws that prevent it from being mistaken for sentient beings.
- NIH pivots away from agency-directed science
Nature, Published online: 17 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00823-2US biomedical funding behemoth says the approach will boost innovation, but some researchers worry that understudied areas of science will suffer.