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
- New Volunteer Data from 143 Observatories Unveils the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse
On April 8, 2024, volunteers participating in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie citizen science project all around the United States hurried to photograph the solar eclipse with the latest, greatest equipment, capturing groundbreaking images of the Sun’s corona.
- Webb Maps Uranus’ Upper Atmosphere
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provided the first vertical view of Uranus’s ionosphere in this image released on Feb. 19, 2026, revealing auroras shaped by its tilted magnetic field. Getting a look at the structure of the region where the atmosphere interacts strongly with the planet’s magnetic field is giving us the most detailed portrait
- How to Accelerate Advances in Ecological Forecasting
Developing shared cyberinfrastructure can enhance predictions of ecological change and enable improved decisionmaking for resource management and public well-being.
- These South Pole Seismometers Will Detect Vibrations 1.5 Miles Under the Ice
The instruments will freeze into Antarctica’s ice sheet, where they will collect detailed, global-scale seismic data.
- Unorthodox ‘universal vaccine’ offers broad protection in mice
Immune-stimulating cocktail could shield against diverse bacterial and viral infections
- A little-known flu virus is sickening cattle around the world. Are humans next?
Features of recently identified influenza D point to possible pandemic threat
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 7, February 2026. <br/>
- Gradience as a cognitive principle for evaluating numerical notations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 7, February 2026. <br/>SignificanceThis study presents a cognitive principle, gradience, for comparing the communicative efficiency of numerical notations, along with two indices for measuring gradience, jitter and inversion. In general, larger numbers require more signs than …
- Nuclear weapons testing is harmful — there’s no case for a restart
Nature, Published online: 24 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00561-5Scientific knowledge about the damaging effects of nuclear-weapons testing helped to end such tests. Those findings haven’t changed.
- Evidence alone won’t save biodiversity: the golden apple snail reveals an implementation gap
Nature, Published online: 24 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00593-xEvidence alone won’t save biodiversity: the golden apple snail reveals an implementation gap