Unlikely Paths To Discovery

Unlikely paths to discovery

Sometimes invention tin beryllium traced backmost to bizarre places: a muddy streambed, a volcanic ash section aliases moreover a hotel-company boardroom

By David M. Ewalt edited by Jeanna Bryner

Scientific American, May 2026

In 1952 Collier’s magazine published an article detailing aerospace technologist Wernher von Braun’s imagination for a abstraction station, promising a spot wherever scientists and moreover visitors could enactment “within nan adjacent 10 aliases 15 years.”

Fifteen years later Hilton Hotels president Barron Hilton gave a reside astatine nan American Astronautical Society successful Dallas, wherever he laid retired an thought for an orbiting edifice he expected to build wrong his lifetime. Thirty-two years aft that, nan institution revived nan thought pinch a caller scheme to build a abstraction position edifice retired of recycled abstraction shuttle outer substance tanks.

Another 12 years passed, and Forbes mag published an article astir Robert Bigelow, different hotel-chain billionaire who was pouring money into a task building inflatable abstraction stations and who predicted a afloat functional residence by 2016. (I should know; I wrote it.)

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Eight years aft that, Barron Hilton died astatine nan property of 91. A twelvemonth aft that, Bigelow’s aerospace institution laid disconnected its full workforce. Six years later—today—there’s still nary abstraction hotel.

I stock this history successful portion because I americium acutely alert of nan consequence a mag takes erstwhile it promises readers they will soon beryllium capable to picnic successful space. But I’m besides excited astir Scientific American’s take, which you’ll find arsenic portion of our package of stories astir “The Science of Luxury.” We don’t usually constitute astir topics specified arsenic high-end fragrances aliases haute horology, but luxury equipment often unrecorded astatine nan technological cutting edge, and their manufacturers are doing subject arsenic innovative arsenic what you’d find successful a assemblage lab.

Our screen story, “Your Heart successful Flames,” is simply a much accepted SciAm communicative but 1 that mightiness get your beat racing arsenic overmuch arsenic a travel to space. Cardiologists person agelong puzzled complete nan truth that up to a 4th of nan group admitted to hospitals for bosom attacks and strokes each twelvemonth don’t grounds immoderate emblematic consequence factors and person moreover worse outcomes than those who do.

Contributing editor Melinda Wenner Moyer tracks nan scientists who’ve spent decades unraveling nan enigma and finds that a increasing assemblage of investigation suggests nan culprit isn’t 1 of nan “fearsome foursome” of consequence factors (hypertension, smoking, precocious LDL cholesterin and type 2 diabetes). Instead it mightiness beryllium chronic inflammation, an immune strategy siren that refuses to move off. It’s a thrilling, sometimes contentious displacement that could rewrite really we forestall nan world’s deadliest disease.

Elsewhere successful nan issue, paleontologist Steve Brusatte shares a imaginable solution to different technological detective story: how birds—and only birds—survived nan asteroid effect that wiped retired each different dinosaur successful nan end-Cretaceous. Brusatte overturns nan aged story of a cleanable dinosaur extinction and reveals that endurance came down to sheer circumstance, a matter of inhabiting nan correct places, eating nan correct foods and increasing astatine nan correct gait erstwhile nan skies went dark.

Writer Robert Kunzig takes america connected a different benignant of travel into an ecological crisis: the mysterious illness of North America’s freshwater mussels. Once nan continent was location to much than 300 species, but now 10 percent of those are extinct already, and galore much are endangered. Kunzig accompanies nan biologists racing to lick nan puzzle, including researchers who raise uncommon mussels successful mini actual silos and ecologists who fishy that an invasive clam whitethorn beryllium starving young mussels retired of existence.

Science is afloat of mysteries, and sometimes nan way to find originates successful places we don’t expect: a muddy streambed, a volcanic ash field, moreover a hotel-company boardroom aliases a firm fragrance lab. I dream this rumor serves arsenic enjoyable and enlightening impervious of that fact.