Little is known about why the woolly rhinoceros went extinct around 14,000 years ago. Scientists have found clues in the frozen remains of an ice age wolf.

"Without Mars, Earth's orbit would be missing major climate cycles. What would humans and other animals even look like if Mars weren't there?"

Radio telescopes are instruments that capture faint radio signals from space and convert them into images of celestial bodies. To observe distant black holes clearly, multiple radio telescopes must capture cosmic signals at exactly the same time, acting as a …

One of the most vivid portraits of "reborn" black hole activity—likened to the eruption of a "cosmic volcano" spreading almost 1 million light-years across space—has been captured in a gigantic radio galaxy.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new Type II supernova. The newly detected supernova, named SN Eos, exploded when the universe was only 1 billion years old. The finding was reported January 7 o…

Muons are unstable subatomic particles that spontaneously and rapidly transform into other particles via a process known as electroweak decay. Altering the speed with which muons decay into other particles was so far deemed a challenging quest, requiring very…

The movement of waves, patterns that carry sound, light or heat, through materials has been widely studied by physicists, as it has implications for the development of numerous modern technologies. In several materials, the movement of waves depends on a phys…

Buried for millions of years, a strange fossil has resurfaced, and no one knows what it is.

Under the Great Salt Lake playa lies a potentially vast reservoir of pressurized freshwater that has accumulated over thousands of years from mountain-derived snowmelt, according to new research from University of Utah geoscientists. This groundwater occupies…

A new software package detailed by Chinese scientists promises to tell what time it is on the moon, accounting for effects of relativity.

After more than 10 years in orbit, the first Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, Sentinel-2A, is still finding new ways to contribute to Earth observation. With its younger siblings, Sentinel-2B and Sentinel-2C, now leading the mission’s core task of delivering …

Inside the stomach of an ancient wolf puppy found entombed in Siberian permafrost, scientists discovered meat from a woolly rhinoceros — and sequenced its genome.

How much fresh water is in the United States? It's a tough question, since most of the water is underground, accessible at varying depths. In previous decades, it's been answered indirectly from data on rainfall and evaporation. Knowing how much groundwater i…

A survey of the reconstructed gene set of the last eukaryotic common ancestor shows a consistent link between Asgard archaea and the origin of numerous, functionally diverse eukaryotic genes, demonstrating the dominant Asgard contribution to eukaryogenes…

Hijacking the energy-producing organelles from immune cells seems to help tumours in mice to infiltrate lymph nodes.

At TU Wien, researchers have discovered a state in a quantum material that had previously been considered impossible. The definition of topological states should be generalized.

A white-necked jacobin hummingbird chick surprises scientists, scaring away wasps by mimicking a poisonous caterpillar.

There may not be as nearly as many small galaxies in the early universe as astronomers predict there should be, which has big implications for the story of how our universe grew up.

For decades, scientists have been counting annual growth rings—similar to tree rings—inside fossilized leg bones of Tyrannosaurus rex to estimate how old the giant carnivores were when they died and how quickly they grew to adulthood. The best estimates from …

Scientists have revealed the most complete skeleton yet of our 2 million-year-old ancestor Homo habilis.

Scientists discover water that's solid and liquid. Superionic ice found in lab could explain Uranus and Neptune's bizarre magnetic fields.

The first crewed Moon mission in 50 years could launch in February, preparing the way for a future landing.

The VENUS survey isn't about planets at all, but about finding multiply-lensed supernovae. The ambition? To save the expanding Universe.

The Digital Futures Lab looks at how emerging technologies can be used, including in research.

If the Chinese have figured out a highly accurate system, the mathematics involved are valid regardless of who writes the software that runs it.