Scientists who developed optogenetics win a Nobel Prize ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
October 5, 2026—A Nobel Prize goes to the science of manipulating cells with light. Plus, a surefire tip to boost creativity, and mathematicians determine the worst way to complete this everyday task.
—Andrea Gawrylewski,
Chief Newsletter Editor
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vanbeets/Getty Images; Scientific American
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Today, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to scientists Karl Deisseroth, Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann for their discoveries underpinning the field of optogenetics, the ability to control genetically modified cells with light. | 3 min read
The United Arab Emirates plans to launch a spacecraft to probe seven asteroids in 2028. | 2 min read
The ancient pre-Roman society of Etruria in Italy embedded sound throughout its culture. Researchers used AI and acoustic technology to bring some of that sound to life. | 3 min read
Our brains use the same machinery to reconstruct the past as we do to imagine the future—and to pondere what might have been. Philosopher Felipe De Brigard, a 2026 MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, explains how memory and imagination become intertwined. | 9 min read
This year has been a record hot year for the U.S. so far. At this pace 2026 is going to set a grim new milestone. | 6 min read
Astronomers spotted two dwarf stars—one red dwarf and one white dwarf—eating the objects that orbit them. | 2 min read
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Biochemist and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth was one of three scientists to win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine today for his work on optogenetics. "We had to solve a lot of problems, had to take a lot of risks," he told Scientific American in the hours just after the Nobel was announced. "A very unlikely to work, but high potential line of work turned out to be fruitful in the end." Watch the full interview.
Deisseroth has written for us a few times over the years; check out his articles explaining how to control cells with light here and here.
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Boost Your Creativity
Getting consistent movement, especially in nature, helps unlock creativity in humans—for both ordinary folks and artists (and everyone in between). A 2022 meta-analysis of 115 studies found a link between motion and creativity. Another 2024 study found that the more movement—in terms of step count—participants engaged in, the greater the creative output they had. A 2025 study that investigated how movement in nature influences brain activity, taking measurements before, during and after hiking and backpacking trips, found a big boost in creativity after the excursion.
How it works: A couple possible explanations: One, multitasking on a daily basis overloads our mental workspace, whereas time spent moving outside frees up brain space to create. Two: movement often boosts mood, and that, in turn, allows you to create.
What the experts say: There is no clear optimal dose of movement that is guaranteed to boost creativity, says David Strayer, a professor of cognition and neural science at the University of Utah. But cognitive benefits appear to begin after about three sessions per week of 30 to 60 minutes of activity. “You start to develop new neurons at that dosage,” he says. “You think more clearly and have the mental space to support creative thinking.”
Join the discussion: How do you get yourself out of a mental rut? Do you find that movement helps grease the wheels for more, or more creative, thoughts? Share your response here.
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Picture Problems
If a painting has a string on its back and you hang it over two nails on the wall, is there a way to hang the painting so that removing either nail will cause the painting to fall? Mathematicians asked themselves this exact question. In other words: What’s the worst way to hang a painting? Known solutions can involve very elaborate string wrappings. A common way mathematicians reason out the query is the “k-out-of-n” problem, where k is the number of nails that need to be removed out of the total, n, for the painting to fall off the wall. For the 2-out-of-4 problem, in which a painting will fall if any two of four nails are removed, the shortest known solution involves 16 wraps around the nails—down from 58 in 2012.
Why this is interesting: Although the problem’s framing (sorry) might sound silly, the underlying mechanics have deep connections to group theory, knot theory, graph theory, and other areas of mathematics. Thinking through some of the rules for solving these puzzles can correspond to the monotone Boolean functions—a function type crucial in fields such as cryptography and voting theory.
What the experts say: Computer scientist Tom Verhoeff says practical uses of the painting problem are beside the point. “For humanity as a whole, we don’t know where our spaceship is going and what we will need to survive,” he says, “and play is one of the ways in which we learn.” —Emma Gometz, Newsletter Editor
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Eating 30 plants a week, some influencers, podcasters and physicians say, will improve your health. Is it legit? | The New York Times($)
An AI tool can reconstruct what you're looking at based on brain scans. | MIT Technology Review ($)
The Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colo., against two oil companies for impacts of climate change. | NBC News
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What is it about being out near trees, the ocean or a field of grass that helps clear some of the cobwebs? One hypothesis scientists have to explain the stress-reducing effects of nature is that being outdoors may provide a break from the mental fatigue of living in a built, modern environment. The brain is sensitive to the aesthetics of its physical environment, and something about all the straight lines and hard surfaces or urban living seems to try our senses. We may not know the precise reason, but we know the effects of even two hours in nature a week can be profound.
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Send me your favorite outdoors de-stressing routine, plus any other comments or feedback on this newsletter: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow.
—Andrea Gawrylewski,
Chief Newsletter Editor
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