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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  • NASA Astronaut Anil Menon

    NASA astronaut Anil Menon poses in a spacesuit for a portrait at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Jan. 8, 2026. Menon will launch aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft to the International Space Station on Tuesday, July 14, accompanied by cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, where they will join the Expedition

    • In This Issue

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 27, July 2026. <br/>

    • Improving cell-free metabolism through direct integration of artificial respiratory chains

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 27, July 2026. <br/>SignificanceA key goal of bottom–up synthetic biology is to construct cell-free systems with life-like, autonomous, and self-sustaining capabilities. Achieving this requires an efficient and controllable energy supply. In this work, we integrate a custom-…