Scientific American Content

July 15, 2026

"Indonesia's new capital is changing the Borneo rainforest forever."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents. Accessed on 15 July 2026, 1509 UTC.

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencemonitor.blogspot.com).

Today

Indonesia's New Capital Is Changing the Borneo Rainforest Forever. Science is Listening to the Change

55min

Indonesia is building a new capital city in the heart of Borneo to replace sinking Jakarta. As construction transforms one of the world's most biodiverse rainforests, scientists and their indigenous collaborators are racing to record the sounds of the forest—and preserve generations of ecological knowledge before it's lost.

See the first X-rays of humans taken in space

First diagnostic space X rays

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55min

Equipping spacecraft with X-ray machines could boost safety for long-duration spaceflights—like a crewed mission to Mars

Astronomers just accidentally spotted the faintest exoplanet ever seen from Earth

Beta Pictoris d discovered

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55min

Beta Pictoris d is more than twice the size of Jupiter, but it is a baby compared to its humongous neighbors

August's solar eclipse inspires science involving jets, balloons and Einstein’s general theory of relativity

Solar eclipses are a rare and brief opportunity for scientists to gather data on everything from the physics of the sun to air pressure in the upper atmosphere

Yesterday

Experimental immune therapy shows promise against deadly childhood brain cancer

Immune cell therapy saves children

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17h

Several children who had aggressive recurrent brain tumors remained disease-free years after this treatment, according to an early-stage trial

NASA’s Hubble reveals a black hole hiding inside a massive star cluster in the Milky Way

Black hole found in Omega Centauri

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17h

Scientists have long suspected that this star cluster was a hotspot for a certain kind of black hole. But for decades, they had been unable to spot any

Prepare for dangerous air pollution in the Northeast, thanks to Minnesota wildfires

Minnesota wildfire smoke alert

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20h

Smoke from northern Minnesota wildfires may drift over the Great Lakes and Northeast this week, bringing hazardous levels of air pollution to major cities

T. rex fossil named ‘Gus’ becomes the most expensive dinosaur sold at auction

T rex auction sparks concern

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20h

This massive dinosaur skeleton sold for more than $50.1 million on Tuesday

Did scientists just create synthetic life?

Scientists create synthetic growing cells

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22h

The SpudCell certainly resembles a living cell, but a key structure inside the cell falls short of the real thing

ChatGPT just proved another 50-year-old math conjecture

OpenAI claims solved longstanding conjecture

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What’s the secret to prompting an AI to solve math problems that have left humans stumped? Tell it to believe in itself

Here's the deal with 'corn sweat'—it's not all actually corn's fault

Corn has taken the heat for recent Midwest summer humidity—unjustly, according to corn experts

Jul 13, 2026

We finally know the name of a Maya mathematician

The signature of Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” was found inscribed in a 1,000-year-old chamber beneath present-day Guatemala

Why have there been so many record-breaking heat waves this summer?

Record heatwave hits US north

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Record-breaking heat waves are beginning to blur together—here’s why and what’s making them so unbearable

Scientists overwhelmingly against rule change that would give political appointees say over science grants

Hundreds of thousands of scientists, including Nobel laureates, warn that changes to the way federal grants are approved would greatly damage American science

Scientists spot sugar in interstellar space for the first time ever

Interstellar sugar detected

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Erythrulose—a sugar found in raspberries—is also prevalent in a giant molecular cloud close to our galaxy’s core, scientists have discovered

Mathematicians still don’t know the fastest way to multiply numbers

A 23-year-old student overturned an ancient conjecture about one of math’s simplest operations

Scientists catch bacteria sharing proteins to survive antibiotics

Bacteria send protein packages to dormant neighbors to endure antibiotic attack