The lovable Star Wars droid is helping to shed light on why some bird species are better at mimicking sounds than others

As holiday feasts and stress approach, an expert explains how to keep your gut healthy without skipping the stuffing.

If you enjoyed Beth Gardiner’s feature about big oil’s bet on plastics, here are more books curated by Scientific American

In recent weeks, dozens of infants in the U.S. have been infected with botulism in an outbreak linked to ByHeart powdered infant formula

A thin crescent moon and dark skies could give watchers a clear view of this astronomical event

Twenty years ago Forbes.com sent hundreds of thousands of messages to the future. Here’s what happened next

A ridiculous but instructive thought experiment involving deep time, plate tectonics, erosion and the slow death of the sun

Black holes and quantum mechanics present a paradox about the preservation of information

When written knowledge is more ephemeral than ever, how can we pass on what’s important?