Beautiful Shapes, a Magic Molecule and Elephant Bromances
The May issue of Scientific American takes you on a deep-sea mining mission, explores dark comets and examines an invisible threat to the food we eat
Scientific American, May 2025
Ask someone to name a favorite shape, and they’ll probably choose one of the usual suspects: triangle, circle, maybe a trapezoid. These run-of-the-mill forms take a back seat to more sophisticated and mind-bending structures in our cover story, in which writer Rachel Crowell asks mathematicians to describe their most adored shape. The responses are not only colorful; they also illustrate why mathematics once fell under the rubric of natural philosophy. The drive to understand the natural world, often through abstract thinking, becomes clear in some of the essays. For instance, one mathematician says, “My favorite shape is the loop, a circle with all geometric information stripped away, leaving only a free-form one-dimensional object.” Other geometric gems include a hyperbolic pair of pants, a hollow form with a waist and two ankles, and a permutahedron, “the site of a beautiful, productive dialogue among geometry, algebra and combinatorics.”
Journalist Willem Marx writes a riveting feature about the behemoth machines plunging their metallic claws into the South Pacific seafloor off Papua New Guinea (PNG) to mine metals and minerals that are critical to the economy. We the readers enter the story as Marx boards a privately owned ship, telling us he’s not sure why the operators allowed a reporter to observe such a brazen project. Marx follows a slew of leads on land and at sea to find out how aware PNG regulators were of this operation, as well as to uncover the identities of the overseas billionaires funding it, reactions from locals and the effects of the mining on deep-sea habitats. The insights he gains about this venture suggest “a new era of deep-sea mining had all but begun.”
A cosmic mystery unfolds, as science writer Robin George Andrews plays detective on the case of some misbehaving space objects now called dark comets. I’ve long been fascinated by investigations into our solar system’s first known interloper, a cigar-shaped structure called ‘Oumuamua whose origins remain elusive. Now, however, astronomers have found a group of dark comets that share some of the interstellar visitor’s oddities: they accelerate around the sun with no apparent means. These cometlike objects fall into two families, the “innies” and the “outies,” Andrews says. One suggested explanation that may resonate with Severance fans: the innies that inhabit the inner solar system are remnants of their former selves, the outies.
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Scientists had long thought male African elephants were relatively solitary creatures with simple social lives compared with those of the females in this matriarchal species. That idea is being turned on its head as research reveals the males are sensitive animals that crave bromances. Behavioral ecologist Caitlin O’Connell tells us these bachelors aren’t loners—instead they form tight-knit social networks in which males support one another and even fight off would-be bullies.
Elephants are the largest land mammals, but a teensy parasite is wreaking outsize havoc in the natural world. This mite, called tropilaelaps, is killing off honeybee populations in Asia and Europe, leaving the agricultural crops they pollinate in dire straits, writes journalist Hannah Nordhaus. If beekeepers and scientists can’t get a handle on the itty-bitty foe in time to keep it out of the Americas, the result could be scarce and expensive produce, beef and dairy because honeybees pollinate cattle feed as well as fruits and vegetables.
The COVID pandemic brought some microscopic bugs into clear view. Now, with bird flu on the rise and norovirus having a heyday, senior features editor Jen Schwartz asks whether the nontoxic disinfectant hypochlorous acid could keep these killers at bay. The weak acid is 100 times more effective than bleach at lower concentrations. When used as an eye cleaner, it can vanquish bacteria, and it has been studied as a nasal rinse to treat infections. It can also disinfect indoor surfaces as a fog or spray. Because the chemical is unstable, it has been slow to hit the market at a large scale. That’s now changing as companies bring it to shelves—sometimes as a beauty product loaded with extra ingredients. Stay safe and informed, everyone.