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Composite image of the Galactic Center showing infrared and radio emission

Composite image of the Galactic Center. Green and yellow show 8 μm and 24 μm emission observed with Spitzer (Churchwell et al. 2009; Carey et al. 2009); red shows 20 cm emission from MeerKAT (Heywood et al. 2019, 2022) and the Green Bank Telescope (Law et al. 2008). Adapted from Henshaw et al. (2023) and Longmore et al. (2026). Image credit: Ashley Barnes, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, and Juan García de la Concepción

Science The First Sugar Between the Stars

Izaskun Jiménez-Serra on finding a fragile molecule near the heart of the galaxy, and what it may have carried to the early Earth

For much of modern astrochemistry, the formation of molecules has been understood as a gradual process. Simple compounds form first. Slightly larger molecules emerge by adding one carbon atom after another. Over millions of years, complexity slowly accumulates. It is an orderly picture, and in many cases, a remarkably successful one. Yet one small molecule has begun to challenge that assumption...

LiDAR image of the Fazenda Atlântica archaeological site in Acre, Brazil

Fazenda Atlântica archaeological site, Acre, Brazil · LiDAR: M. Pärssinen and F. de Novaes

On the Bookshelf Civilization Written Into the Land

Alceu Ranzi and Martti Pärssinen on the Aquiry civilization

Before satellites and laser scans confirmed a civilization of possibly millions once thrived in the western Amazon, Brazilian geographer Alceu Ranzi and Finnish...

Raffael Spachtholz and Katharina Glöckl beside the scanning tunneling microscope setup used in the experiment

Raffael Spachtholz and Katharina Glöckl · University of Regensburg

Science A High-Speed Camera for the Electron

Katharina Glöckl and Raffael Spachtholz on electron motion

Some experiments reveal, above all, the limits of what can be known. In July, researchers at the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy, working with...

Encounters

Glacier Walk Iceland © Saumya Kesurvala

Among Mountains and Glaciers

Enter the Gallery

Our Narratives is a place where contributors share the ideas, stories, and discoveries that move us forward, inspiring each other toward a better future.

From the Magazine

The restored Borges Labyrinth viewed from above on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore

Architecture

Time Is Itself an Architect

Renata Codello on the Borges Labyrinth

A labyrinth, by definition, resists being fully known from within it. You can walk its paths, but you cannot see its whole shape while you are inside it. That is...

A protocell drifting in the shallow, mineral-rich waters of the early Earth, with a fatty membrane enclosing a strand of RNA

Science

Before the First Cell

When chemistry became biology

Somewhere on the early Earth, between three and four billion years ago, chemistry became biology. No one knows exactly where, how, or how many times it might...

Diagram tracing the divergence of the operational code and the standard genetic code from a shared evolutionary origin

Science

Before the Genetic Code

On the origins of biological meaning

One of the deepest questions in biology remains unresolved. Life depends on a translation system that converts nucleotide sequences into proteins through the genetic code, yet the origins of that system reach back to a period before modern cells existed.