A feed worth finishing

Scroll real science instead of doomscrolling

ScrollSci is a vertical, full-screen feed of science — the format short-video apps use, pointed at real research. Every card starts from a named source: arXiv, bioRxiv, PLOS, eLife, NASA, ESA, IEEE Spectrum and dozens more. You pick from twelve fields and get a 30-second summary plus a plain line on why it matters. Free, in any browser.

Open ScrollSci See how it works

No install. Works on your phone's browser.

  • Every card cites its source
  • Twelve fields, your pick
  • No ads, no tracking pixels
Physics

The first image of a black hole took eight telescopes

On 10 April 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope released the first direct image of a black hole — the one at the centre of galaxy M87, 55 million light-years away. Eight radio observatories on four continents observed together, turning Earth itself into a single planet-sized lens.

Why it mattersIt turned a prediction of general relativity into a photograph, and the same method later imaged the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy.

Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration · Apr 2019

Aerospace

Parker Solar Probe passed the Sun at 692,000 km/h

On 24 December 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe passed 6.1 million kilometres from the Sun's surface — closer than any spacecraft has been — at roughly 692,000 km/h, the fastest a human-made object has travelled. Its 11.4 cm carbon shield reached about 1,400 °C while the instruments behind it stayed near room temperature.

Why it mattersMeasuring the solar wind where it is born, rather than where it arrives, is the difference between describing space weather and forecasting it.

NASA · Dec 2024

Biotech

A 50-year-old problem in biology now has 200 million answers

In July 2022, DeepMind and EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute published predicted 3D structures for over 200 million proteins — very nearly every one known to science — in the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database. Before that, resolving a single structure in the lab could take a doctoral student years.

Why it mattersStructure constrains function, so this shortens the first step of almost every drug-discovery and enzyme-design project.

DeepMind & EMBL-EBI · Jul 2022

Mathematics

The four-colour theorem was the first proof no human could check

In 1976 Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken proved that four colours are enough to fill in any map without two bordering regions matching. Their proof reduced the problem to roughly 1,900 configurations, then checked each by computer — about 1,200 hours of machine time.

Why it mattersIt forced the field to decide what a proof is for — certainty, or understanding — a question formal proof assistants are still working through.

Appel & Haken, University of Illinois · 1976

Four sample cards. Scroll them. In the app each one also carries a generated illustration.

Twelve fields

Pick what you want to scroll

Tick any combination when you sign up, and change it whenever you like. Each field draws on several public feeds, listed in full further down.

  • Physics

    6 sources

  • Mathematics

    4 sources

  • Biology

    4 sources

  • Biotech

    5 sources

  • Aerospace

    6 sources

  • Environment

    4 sources

  • Computer Science

    5 sources

  • Music

    3 sources

  • Art

    5 sources

  • Philosophy

    5 sources

  • History

    5 sources

  • Literature

    5 sources

The short version

What is ScrollSci?

ScrollSci is a science feed built in the shape of a short-video app: one full-screen card at a time, swipe up for the next. The difference is what fills the cards. Nothing is posted by users and nothing is invented — each card is a summary of one real item pulled from a public research feed or archive, with the source named on the card.

Grounded in a real source

Each card begins with a fetched item — an arXiv abstract, a NASA release, a Wikipedia entry — and the source name and link travel with it.

No engagement algorithm

Your feed is decided by the fields you tick, not by what keeps you watching. There is no recommender model in the loop at all.

It has an end

Cards come from one shared, finite pool. You can reach the bottom of it — which is the point. There is no infinite tail engineered to hold you.

Provenance

Where does each scroll come from?

ScrollSci does not have a newsroom and does not accept submissions — every card traces back to one of the sources below, and each one is free and publicly readable, so you can always check the original yourself. Each field mixes research and institutional feeds with a lighter one, so a run of cards varies in tone as well as topic.

The complete source list. Every ScrollSci card originates from one of these sources.
FieldSources
BiologybioRxiv · PLOS Biology · eLife · ScienceDaily (Plants & Animals)
BiotechbioRxiv · PLOS Computational Biology · PLOS Genetics · GEN · Bioengineer.org
AerospaceNASA · ESA · NASA Science · Phys.org (Space) · NASA Earth Observatory · Universe Today
Computer SciencearXiv (computer science) · IEEE Spectrum · ACM TechNews · MIT Technology Review · Hacker News
MathematicsarXiv (math) · Quanta Magazine · ScienceDaily (Mathematics) · Plus Magazine
PhysicsarXiv (physics) · APS Physics · CERN Courier · Phys.org (Physics) · ScienceDaily (Physics) · Quanta Magazine
EnvironmentarXiv (atmospheric & oceanic physics) · Yale Environment 360 · ScienceDaily (Earth & Climate) · Mongabay
MusicarXiv (sound & audio) · Acoustics Today · Open Culture
ArtarXiv (vision & graphics) · Smithsonian Magazine (Arts & Culture) · Hyperallergic · The Art Newspaper · Colossal
PhilosophyarXiv (history & philosophy of physics) · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Daily Nous · Aeon
HistoryWikipedia (On this day) · Smithsonian Magazine (History) · BBC History Extra · Damn Interesting · The Public Domain Review
LiteratureProject Gutenberg · The Millions · The Paris Review (Daily) · Literary Hub · The Public Domain Review

A note on preprints. arXiv hosts preprints — papers shared before peer review. That is why they are fast, and also why a ScrollSci card is a starting point for reading, not a citation. The card links the paper so you can judge it yourself.

Accuracy

How does ScrollSci keep AI summaries honest?

The summaries are written by a language model, and that is worth being direct about. The model's job is deliberately narrow: compress one fetched source into 30 seconds of reading. Four things keep it inside that job.

  1. 1

    It summarises, it does not research

    Every card is built from text that was fetched first. The prompts instruct the model to stay inside that source and not add facts from anywhere else — it is a compression step, not a knowledge lookup.

  2. 2

    Thin sources get hedged, not filled in

    Most Hacker News front-page posts are bare links with no text of their own. ScrollSci fetches the linked page's description as real grounding, and where there still isn't enough to say, the summary says so rather than inventing specifics.

  3. 3

    The source stays on the card

    Every card names where it came from and links out. Nothing is presented as ScrollSci's own reporting, and the original is always one tap away.

  4. 4

    Anyone can flag a card

    Every card has a flag button that opens a comment box. Flagged cards go to a review queue and are corrected or removed. Readers are the last line of the check.

What ScrollSci is not. These are machine-written summaries of real sources. That is not peer review, and it is not a substitute for reading the paper. Treat a card as a pointer worth following — and if one looks wrong, flag it.

Read the full method →

The trade

How is this different from an endless video feed?

The scroll gesture is not the problem — what it is attached to is. ScrollSci keeps the format and changes the machinery underneath it: no recommender, no user posts, no bottomless tail.

ScrollSci compared with a conventional short-video feed, on the five things that decide how a session goes.
An endless short-video feedScrollSci
What decides what you see A model optimising for watch time The fields you ticked, and nothing else
Where content comes from Anyone with an account Six named research and archive sources
What a session leaves you Usually nothing you could restate A specific claim, its source, and why it matters
When it ends It doesn't A finite pool you can reach the end of
How it's generated Personalised per viewer, endlessly One shared pool — everyone sees the same cards

One pool, not one per person

Cards are generated once and served to everyone. There is no per-viewer generation, which means there is no profile of you steering what you see — and no reason to build one.

Nothing is watching the session

No ad network, no third-party analytics, no tracking pixels. The app stores what it needs to run your account and nothing beyond it.

The reader

Who is ScrollSci for?

People who reach for their phone out of habit and would rather come away with something. Students keeping a loose eye on fields next to their own; anyone who has tried to read more papers and lost to the activation energy; and anyone who has closed a video app after forty minutes and could not name one thing they saw.

It works best as a replacement habit rather than an extra one — same gesture, same idle five minutes, different residue.

The price

What does it cost?

ScrollSci is free to use. There are no ads and nothing is sold on — the running cost is low by design, because cards are generated once for everyone rather than per visitor.

You need an account so the app can remember which fields you picked and what you saved. Email and password, or sign in with Google.

Questions

Questions people ask

Do I need to install an app?

No. ScrollSci runs in any modern mobile or desktop browser. On a phone you can use your browser's “Add to Home Screen” option to get an app-style icon that opens straight into the feed.

Which fields can I choose?

Twelve: biology, biotech, aerospace, computer science, mathematics, physics, environment, music, art, philosophy, history and literature. You pick any combination when you sign up and can change it at any time in settings — the feed filters to your selection immediately.

Are the summaries written by AI?

Yes. Each card's summary and its “why it matters” line are generated by Google's Gemini models from the text of one fetched source, and the illustration is generated separately. The model is instructed not to introduce facts beyond that source. The source is named on every card so you can check it, and a flag button on each card sends corrections to a review queue.

How often are new cards added?

In batches, drawn from the source feeds as they update. Because the pool is shared rather than generated per visitor, everyone sees the same new cards at the same time.

Can I save something for later?

Yes. Every card can be liked, saved or flagged, and everything you have liked or saved is collected in your library.

Is my reading tracked or sold?

No. There is no ad network, no third-party analytics and no tracking pixels on the app. It stores your account, the fields you picked, and the cards you liked, saved or flagged — which is what makes those features work. See the privacy notice for the full list.

Same gesture. Something to show for it.

Pick your fields and start scrolling. It takes about a minute to set up, and it's free.

Open ScrollSci How it works