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
- 2026 IGARSS Hyperwall Schedule
IGARSS 2026 Join NASA in the Exhibit Hall (Booth #100) for Hyperwall Storytelling by NASA experts. Full Hyperwall Agenda below. MONDAY, AUGUST 10 3:00 PM Technology Enabling the Future of Earth ScienceMike Seablom3:15 PM Discovery Earth: New Missions & Technical Innovation Advancing Earth System InsightsKaren St. Germain TUESDAY, AUGUST 11 10:00 AMSTELLA: Open-Source Multisenor Platforms For Real-Time
- NASA’s IXPE Studies Magnetar
Scientists using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) conducted more than 140 hours of observations of the magnetar 1E 1547-5408, shown in this Aug. 5, 2026, artist’s concept, between March and April 2025. In doing so, they may have captured empty space behaving in a way physicists have predicted for 90 years, but never directly
- Getting to Know Uranus’s “Breathing” Bow Shock
The ice giant’s rotation causes daily expansion and contraction of the boundary where its magnetic field slows the solar wind.
- A Rare Look at How Life First Colonizes Cooling Lava Tubes
Life finds a way, and when volcanoes form new land, it gets going as soon as temperatures drop to manageable levels—even underground.
- DNA reveals the hidden past of North America’s bison—and keys to their future
Scientists are racing to conserve what remains of these majestic animals’ genetic diversity
- Adaptive modulation of theta sweeps in the brain’s navigation circuit | Science
Efficient navigation requires prioritizing information from behaviorally relevant locations. In rats, such selective sampling may arise from theta-paced sweeps in grid and place cell populations, which scan nearby space in a left-right alternating …
- In This Issue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 31, August 2026. <br/>
- Liver sinusoidal endothelium mediates systemic clearance of ultrasmall gold nanoparticles through secretion of circulating exosomes
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 31, August 2026. <br/>SignificanceGold nanoparticles hold great promise for biomedical applications. However, most studies only focus on mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS)-mediated clearance, and the role of liver sinusoidal endothelium in nanoparticle processing remains …
- Universal vaccine for pneumococcal disease moves closer to reality
Nature, Published online: 07 August 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02462-zTargeting shared proteins could help to control bacterial subtypes that current vaccines do not protect against.
- Briefing Chat: Is DNA repair the secret to a long life? Whales and mole rats offer tantalizing hints
Nature, Published online: 07 August 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02488-3Nature staff discuss how animal studies are starting to uncover how DNA repair could prolong life, and how COVID-19 can reawaken dormant viruses.