Health & Medicine
Explainer: What is skin?
The body’s soft, outer armor contains three layers, each with its own important role to play.
Current Issue
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
How to make a pitched ball curve to your will
A range of tricks pitchers use to get curve all come down to the thin layers of air next to the ball — and how a ball’s spin and seams affect them.
Explainer
Technically Fiction
Physics
Could a person ever wield lightning as a weapon?
From the shocking powers of electric eels to laser-guided lightning, aiming electricity is more real than it sounds.
Profile
Humans
Using physics can help athletes avoid sports injuries
Jessica Talmage uses physics to help understand how the body moves. Her findings help athletes avoid sports injuries and improve their performance.
Features
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These ultra-long experiments outlive their scientists — on purpose
To study phenomena that unfold over decades or even centuries, scientists may launch projects they may never see finished.
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How to make a pitched ball curve to your will
A range of tricks pitchers use to get curve all come down to the thin layers of air next to the ball — and how a ball’s spin and seams affect them.
More Stories from the April 1, 2026 issue
- Fossils
Here’s why ammolite gems have a rainbow shimmer
The fossils’ fabulous colors arise from delicate assemblies of crystal plates.
- Health & Medicine
Recruits agreed to be buried face down in the snow, for science
A safety device helped maintain the buried person’s oxygen levels for a half hour or more, which might provide time for an avalanche rescue.
- Animals
Flamingos hunt by creating their own underwater tornadoes
Chilean flamingos use their beaks and feet to create underwater whirlpools that suck in prey.
- Earth
Experiment: How does the tilt of Earth’s axis affect the seasons?
Seasons have nothing to do with Earth’s distance from the sun. The real reason for the seasons is the tilt of Earth’s axis.
- Space
This is the largest, most detailed radio image yet of our Milky Way
Supernova remnants, stellar nurseries and more populate this new view of our galaxy, as seen from Earth’s southern hemisphere.
- Animals
Beware the vipers: These snakes appear to strike the fastest
Other snake species, however, can also attack at amazingly fast speeds, giving stiff competition to some of the slower vipers.
- Health & Medicine
A little shape-up helps these pimple patches get a grip
These zit patches use some innovative geometry to anchor onto skin. This solves one problem that’s hindered other uses of microneedles for drug delivery.
- Life
Award-winning micro-photos depict stunning details of nature
From fluorescent ferns to sprawling neurons, the 2025 Nikon Small World contest showcased the artistry of life as seen through a microscope.
