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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For Today’s Inspiration

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    This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image released Nov. 5, 2026, provides a lesson in galactic history. The sparkling collection of stars is named Messier 30 (M30) after the French astronomer, Charles Messier, who cataloged M30 and other diffuse objects that might be mistaken for comets in the early telescopes of Messier’s time. M30 lies about

  • APOD: 2026 November 6 – A Farewell to Swift

    APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 November 6 – A… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss   APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. A Farewell

    • In This Issue

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 44, November 2026. <br/>

    • Origami state machine with time-varying magnetic fields

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 44, November 2026. <br/>SignificanceMultistable mechanical systems can encode information and functionality through transitions between discrete states. A key challenge consists of reliably programming such systems to a target state without prior knowledge of the current state. …