All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA—and it likely lived on Earth only 400 million years after its formation.

Astronomers from the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Manoa and elsewhere have observed the Taurus star-forming region, which resulted in the discovery of planetary-mass and stellar companions of two ultracool dwarf stars. The new finding was presented in a pape…

To develop more robust next-generation aerial explorers, NASA's Mars Exploration program is turning to drones.

Because they rely on hosts for a majority of functions, viruses aren’t considered alive. But entities like this one complicate matters.

Beneath the surface of the Moon, hidden deep within its crust, scientists have uncovered an ancient heat source that has been quietly emitting warmth for billions of years.

Almost a half-mile below the surface of Monterey Bay, California, scientists have recorded rare footage of a seven-arm octopus— only the fourth time the same research team has spotted the species in about four decades.

Starfish Space and Impulse Space have revealed the successful execution of the “Remora” mission, marking…

New climate data raises questions about how much the Earth has warmed

One of the oldest unsolved riddles in planetary science concerns the origin of the moon. Over a century ago, George Darwin proposed that tidal and centrifugal forces on a rapidly rotating proto-Earth caused the moon to be spun off into an Earth orbit.

What could force a supermassive black hole (SMBH) out of its host galaxy? They can have hundreds of millions, even billions of solar masses. What's powerful enough to dislodge one of these behemoths?

When astronauts next go to the moon, they'll find a little bit of home waiting for them.

An ultra-hot rocky exoplanet may be wrapped in a dense atmosphere, defying expectations about what small planets can sustain. Scientists working with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found the clearest evidence so far that a rocky planet beyond our sola…

Ancient human DNA from Grotta della Monaca in reveals ancestry patterns, kinship-based burial practices, and evidence of a parent-offspring union in Bronze Age southern Italy.

There were huge disruptions to the global scientific enterprise this year — but immense bright spots for health, discovery, innovation and research collaboration.

A new model predicts, minute by minute, how individual cells will fold, divide, and rearrange during a fruit fly’s earliest stage of growth. The method may help scientists predict the development of more complex tissues or identify early signs of diseases suc…

Scientists may have discovered how the Mediterranean Sea vanished, according to a recent study revealing it happened in two phases.

With the observation of SN 2025wny, a lensed superluminous supernova, astronomy's future comes into sharp, exciting focus.

Liftoff occurred at 12:25 a.m. EST on Monday (Dec. 15).

A recent study suggests that most smaller galaxies may not have supermassive black holes in their center. This new finding goes against what scientists have previously known about galaxies and black holes. If proven to be true, it could reshape our understand…

About 880 light-years from Earth, a hot mess of an exoplanet is slowly spilling its atmosphere into space, creating two enormous tails of helium that stretch more than halfway around its star.

Astronomers at the University of Tokyo have used gravitational lensing to measure how fast the universe is expanding, adding weight to one of cosmology's most intriguing mysteries. Their technique exploits the way massive galaxies bend light from distant quas…

A never-before-seen image of individual oxygen atoms dissolved in water has been captured.

Scientists have uncovered a powerful new antibody that disrupts a key protein helping triple-negative breast cancer survive and evade immunity. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is considered one of the most aggressive and difficult forms of breast cancer …

Rocky planets like our Earth may be far more common than previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. It suggests that when our solar system formed, a nearby supernova (the massive explosion of a star near the end o…

Glacial earthquakes are a special type of earthquake generated in cold, icy regions. First discovered in the Northern Hemisphere more than 20 years ago, these quakes occur when huge chunks of ice fall from glaciers into the sea.