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
- Fiery Fall Color in Southern Chile
The beech forests of southern Patagonia put on vibrant autumn displays.
- NASA’s X-59 Gets Freedom 250 Logo
NASA’s X-59 is helping the nation celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence with an update to its livery – its official paint job and insignia. The one-of-a-kind research aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to demonstrate technology to fly supersonic, or faster than the speed of sound, without generating loud sonic booms.
- Trump Terminates Entire National Science Board
govern the National Science Foundation (NSF). The National Science Board directs and approves large funding decisions for NSF’s approximately $9 billion basic science research budget. It is meant to function independently from the federal administration to keep science funding insulated from political pressure and budget cycles.
- Tracing the Path of PFAS Across Antarctica
A new study examines the presence of forever chemicals in one of Earth’s most remote regions.
- 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 …
- ‘World models’ are AI’s latest sensation: what are they and what can they do?
Nature, Published online: 28 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00820-5Training AI world models on data about physical environments could improve their real-world capabilities in technologies such as robotics.
- China’s latest push to commercialize research: match 680,000 innovators with companies
Nature, Published online: 28 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01202-7The nation’s top-down approach contrasts with that of countries such as the United States, where market forces drive innovation.