Today in Science: Where does consciousness come from? And other great stories

We're picking our favorite stories of the year ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

December 29, 2025—Most of us are off this week enjoying a holiday break, but I wanted to check in and send along some of our favorite articles of the year. First up, the biggest discoveries in neuroscience and math, plus we picked the best pics from space in 2025.  —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor 10 THINGS WE LEARNED ABOUT THE BRAIN IN 2025 fergregory/Getty Images The greatest mystery about the brain is how it creates consciousness. Scientists have many theories of consciousness, and two recently went head-to-head in a scientific face-off. | 6 min read You don't remember being a newborn, or likely even a toddler. Adults' earliest memories tend to start around preschool and no earlier. But recent research suggests that your brain was making memories back then. | 4 min read  Researchers were able to laser the eyes of five participants to create an impossible new color the scientists called olo: a wildly saturated blue-green that exists beyond our normal visual range. | 5 min read Click here to read the best brain stories of the year THE TOP 10 MATH DISCOVERIES OF 2025 Dudeney's Dissection Transforming an Equilateral Triangle to a Square," by Mark D. Meyerson (reference) How many pieces must you cut a triangle into to be able to rearrange it into a square? This year researchers finally proved that a triangle cut into fewer than four pieces cannot be turned into a square. | 4 min read Anyone who's moved houses can appreciate the dilemma of trying to fit a large couch around a corner. Turns out, this is a formal question in mathematics: What is the largest shape that can turn a right angle in a narrow corridor without getting stuck? Researchers have now found a solution. | 4 min read  A newfound shape called a noperthedron has 90 vertices, 240 edges and 152 faces. The baroque shape has a surprising property that disproves a long-standing geometrical conjecture: no matter how you shift or rotate it, one noperthedron can't fall through a straight hole in an identical noperthedron. | 5 min read Click here to read about more math discoveries Support independent science journalism with a subscription to Scientific American.  THE BEST SPACE IMAGES FROM 2025

• Astronomers entered a mind-blowing new era this year with the first light of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. At an event in June, scientists revealed the product of just 10 hours of observations—images that seem to zoom forever, a treasure trove of galaxies and colorful clouds of gas and dust splashed across the sky. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory) • This stunning image comes from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and shows delicately nested spirals of material thrown out over some 700 years by a celestial system called Apep. Apep includes two so-called Wolf-Rayet stars, which are bright, massive stars that eject huge amounts of material for a few million years before they collapse into either a black hole or a neutron star.  (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (image); Yinuo Han/California Institute of Technology/Ryan White/Macquarie University (science); Alyssa Pagan/STScI (image processing)) • The sun is officially out of its period of maximum solar activity, but that doesn't mean it's quiet. In November a flurry of solar outbursts stunned sky watchers as far south as Mexico and Florida with jaw-dropping auroras. (Image credit: Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Click here to see more great space images THE YEAR IN BOOKS Scientific American has been reviewing and recommending books for more than 100 years. Since we're at year's-end, our editors and staffers have picked out their favorite reads from 2025, and this year we narrowed down our top 10 favorite fiction and nonfiction titles released since January. Add some of these to your 2026 reading lists.  Here are the 67 books Scientific American staffers couldn't put down this year, from fantasy epics to gripping nonfiction. | 16 min read  The 10 best nonfiction books of 2025, according to us, from the history of replaceable body parts to our AI future. | 5 min read Our picks of the 10 best fiction books of 2025 explore far-off planets, future climate catastrophes and more. | 5 min read I'll be back tomorrow with another round up of our favorite articles of the year. Tell me what you loved reading about in 2025: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow!  —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters here. Scientific American One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004 ​ Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American here ​ Unsubscribe    Preferences     View in Browser