Stories by Michael D. Lemonick

Several unexplained measurements are threatening to upend scientists’ understanding of the universe’s origin and fate

Earlier this month a meteorite crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home. The residents are still pondering the fate of their gift from the skies

Research is a self-correcting process, but that fact is often lost on the public

Here are pandemic highlights for the week

Michael Lemonick, opinion editor at Scientific American, talks about his most recent book, The Perpetual Now: A Story of Amnesia, Memory and Love, about Lonni Sue Johnson, who suffered a specific kind of brain damage that robbed her of much of her memory and her ability to form new memories, and what she has revealed to neuroscientists about memory and the brain.

This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to the team behind NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, a space telescope that launched in 2001 to map the cosmic microwave background—the earliest, oldest light we can detect from the universe’s infancy. The WMAP team will split the $3 million award, with its leaders receiving the largest shares. One of those leaders, WMAP’s chief theorist David Spergel, sat down to speak with Scientific American about WMAP’s science and its legacy. 

Astrophysicists searching for gravitational waves have finally learned what happens when you crash two neutron stars together--and it's very, very shiny.

Michael D. Lemonick explains how a postmortem study of the most celebrated amnesic in history went awry

In the far reaches of the solar system, a hidden planet larger than Earth may be lurking

In the far reaches of the solar system, a hidden planet larger than Earth may be lurking

Astronomers have found compelling hints of a huge, unseen world that may reside in the murky reaches of the Kuiper Belt

Emerging evidence suggests that the first starlight to shine after the big bang’s flash came from distant suns that ranged from very large to incredibly huge

Not long after the big bang's flash, all light left the cosmos. Astronomers are now solving the mystery of its return