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
- NASA to Cover 34th SpaceX Resupply Mission Space Station Departure
NASA and its international partners are set to receive scientific research samples and hardware as a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to depart the International Space Station on Tuesday, June 16, for its return to Earth. Watch NASA’s live undocking coverage beginning at 11:45 a.m. EDT on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel.
- Black Eye Galaxy
This March 20, 2026, image of Messier 64, or the Black Eye Galaxy, is a composite view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. It shows Messier 64 captured at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths by Webb, while Hubble’s image shows the galaxy in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. Messier 64 is characterized
- 6 Ways This Year’s “Super El Niño” Could Affect Climate, Humans, and Marine Creatures
The key word here is “could.” Experts emphasize that no two El Niños are alike.
- Multi-Scale Fault Roughness Encapsulated in a Friction Law
A new rate- and roughness-dependent friction law incorporates multi-scale fault processes to reproduce earthquake fracture energy scaling.
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 23, June 2026. <br/>
- With qualitative research, the risks of data sharing can outweigh the rewards
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 23, June 2026. <br/>
- An innovative technology boosts image quality for protein structures
Nature, Published online: 12 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01858-1After years of effort, two research teams have developed ‘laser phase plate’ systems that could help cryo-electron-microscopy users to generate high-quality structures for a broad range of proteins.
- Humans outperform AI at this highly rigorous mathematics test
Nature, Published online: 12 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01888-9A new benchmark pitting AI against previously unseen maths problems shows systems still fall short of top human expertise.