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.

Most Recent Stories

For Today’s Inspiration

  • Full Moon over Artemis II

    A full moon is seen shining over NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early hours of February 1, 2026. The agency concluded a wet dress rehearsal for the agency’s Artemis II test flight early Tuesday morning,

  • NASA Space to Soil Challenge

    Rapid advances in commercial space, artificial intelligence, and edge computing are transforming what is possible for Earth observation. By pushing more intelligence onboard, missions can move from passively collecting data to actively interpreting and responding to changing surface conditions in near-real time, enabling more targeted observations and dramatically improving the value of data returned to

  • Tsunamis from the Sky

    Not all tsunamis come from the seafloor, some are triggered by the atmosphere, driven by fast-moving storms and pressure waves, and can strike coasts with little warning.

  • A Mid-Ocean Ridge in the Norwegian Sea Pumps Out Hydrogen

    Vent fluids collected from the Knipovich Ridge contain unexpectedly high concentrations of hydrogen, potentially produced by the degradation of organic matter.

  • In This Issue

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 4, January 2026. <br/>

  • Cytoplasmic crowding acts as a porous medium reducing macromolecule diffusion

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 4, January 2026. <br/>SignificanceMolecular diffusion is a fundamental and energy-saving transport mechanism. As such, it is central to numerous functions in living cells such as cell growth, biochemical signaling, and gene synthesis. However, the intracellular space is …