Section
Science news: space, biology, climate, medicine and the research changing how we live.
Hungarian astronomers say tidal forces left the star KIC 2852961 almost, but not quite, locked in rotation, and that gap powers the most violent flares in the Kepler field.
A supercomputer study led by Kenta Kiuchi finds turbulence at the contact point could forge a magnetar, one of the universe's most strongly magnetized objects.
KAIST-led researchers used an X-ray laser to watch oxygen vacancies trap electrons, a clue for better sunlight-driven hydrogen production.
Fraunhofer researchers put nitrogen-vacancy diamond inside a laser cavity and read the magnetic field from the laser's output instead of its faint glow.
Livermore lasers hit magnesium oxide at 572 gigapascals and found it melts near 13,200 kelvin, but only the direction of compression decides the path it takes there.
A Helsinki researcher's streak-hunting software caught C/2026 S1 (Euclid) in five image sets, and the Minor Planet Center confirmed it on Oct. 8.
Imperial College and Columbia researchers pinned a 2021 InSight detection to a deep strike-slip fault, showing ancient faults on Mars can still rupture today.
The material, made from the plastic in marathon emergency blankets, keeps its insulating power under compression and bending, a gap in today's space insulation.
Gaia ages for stars across the galaxy show the disk flattened fast until about 10.8 billion years ago, then slowly, favoring one of two rival models of how it formed.
Manchester and Lancaster researchers found the long-sought cation was never unstable. The salt used to study it was destroying it.
Radar tracking of sinking ice above the East Antarctic lake reveals a drainage that left a 6.4-meter dent and hints at a plumbing network beneath the ice sheet.
A compact clump 16,300 light-years away holds 20 to 30 times the Sun's mass yet shows no sign of jets, a rare view of how giant stars begin.
Proteins pulled from skull and jaw fragments found in northern China in the 1970s identify the Xujiayao remains as Denisovan, hinting the lineage was widespread across East Asia.
Planet-forming disks in the famous nebula look far younger than their stars. A merger of two stars a few hundred thousand years ago, triggered by a third, may explain why.
A Science study of Baffin Island's Barnes Ice Cap finds ice was regrowing until warming in the 1960s reversed it. The lead author says humans have "jolted the system."
A study in Nature Health puts the toll across 854 cities at 50,391, a 71% jump over the previous deadliest summer, in 2022.
A new analysis finds all eight suspiciously dense super-heavy planets orbit magnetically active stars, with odds of that happening by chance near 1% for the four rocky ones.
Instead of spacing frames evenly, a new 'logarithmic' imaging method packs them close at the start and spreads them out later, tracing five orders of magnitude in time in a single shot.
Two research aircraft gathered an unprecedented data set on pyrocumulonimbus storms, wildfire-fueled thunderclouds that spawn dry lightning, fire tornadoes and smoke plumes reaching the stratosphere.
A new review in Alcheringa says the state's microbialites, which stretch back almost 3.5 billion years, may signal ecological stress, but fossil sites and living reefs face damage from tourism, collecting and climate change.
The MMX probe is set to lift off from Tanegashima on Tuesday, with a French-German rover named IDEFIX and a plan to return at least 10 grams of Phobos material to Earth.
Astronomers using a gravitational lens say the galaxy MG B2016+112 hosts the most tightly paired black holes yet confirmed at such a distance, seen when the universe was about 2 billion years old.
Sulfur trapped in tiny apatite crystals suggests plate tectonics was already carrying oxidized material deep into the planet as far back as 3.4 billion years ago, long before the atmosphere filled with oxygen.
NASA's Mars rover has covered 28.1 miles, edging Opportunity's 28.06, thanks to autonomous navigation that lets it 'think while driving.' NASA has extended its mission through 2028.
A National Taiwan University team's plastic microfluidic device needs no electricity and about 3 microliters of blood, and matched hospital analyzers in tests on 21 patient samples.
UC San Diego researchers used coherent X-rays to see inside a working vanadium dioxide neuristor, finding that jammed flow lets it learn and free flow erases what it learned.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images show the Moon's radius has dropped about 148 feet over the past 400 to 800 million years. Moonquakes could strike anywhere on its surface.
Modeling of the 1,800-km Arsia Mons cloud suggests water vapor freezes directly into ice without dust, a process never before observed in any planetary atmosphere.
A PNAS analysis of 20,736 papers found Greenland drew 20% of the attention while boreal permafrost thaw, with a similar 1.5C threshold, got 0.7%.
TDE 2023mfm is a rare off-nuclear tidal disruption, hinting that a wandering black hole of 1 to 10 million solar masses roams the host galaxy.