Science News Today

Science News Today produces evidence-based reporting on discoveries and developments in biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, health and medicine, Earth sciences, archaeology, and technology. Our reporting draws on peer-reviewed research, original scientific studies, and other reliable scientific sources. Articles published under this byline reflect a collaborative editorial process that may include research, source verification, fact-checking, writing, and editing, rather than the work of a single author. Science News Today takes editorial responsibility for content published under this byline. For more information about our standards and practices, please see our Editorial Policy.

Articles by Science News Today

960×0 (1)

The Search for Exoplanets: Could Another Earth Be Out There?

earths-atmosphere-is-o

What If a Supernova Exploded Near Earth? The Science Behind Cosmic Threats

F5830A33-26BE-4787-A01BFC116AE7209E_source

How Will the Universe End? The Most Mind-Bending Theories in Astronomy

black-hole-1-1536×864

Black Holes: Where Science Breaks Down and Mystery Begins

_6edd4a3d-f865-40e7-a2b3-a6e241618602

What Really Happened at the Big Bang? The Origins of Everything Explained

alexander-andrews-520156-unsplash

Are We Alone in the Universe? What Astronomy Is Still Trying to Find

Artistic depiction of a spin wave. Credit: Demie Kepaptsoglou.

We Just Watched Magnetism Dance at the Smallest Scale Ever Seen

_a80294b9-b83f-4928-8276-f99e8838758a

Scientists Discover a Hidden Phase of Matter That Could Power the Future of Space Travel

Schematics of the minimal cell. Credit: Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC)

The First Artificial Cell That Knows Where to Go

Earth's continents have experienced unprecedented freshwater loss since 2002, driven by climate change, unsustainable groundwater use and extreme droughts. A new Arizona State University-led study highlights the emergence of four continental-scale "mega-drying" regions, all located in the northern hemisphere, with staggering implications for freshwater availability. Credit: Sophia Franz

The Planet Is Drying Faster Than We Ever Imagined

Across warming seas, record-breaking marine heat waves in 2023 underscored the growing vulnerability of ecosystems and human livelihoods. These events contributed to fishery losses and revealed region-specific drivers, including enhanced shortwave radiation, oceanic advection, and changes in upper-ocean stratification. Together, these mechanisms illustrate the intensifying influence of climate variability on ocean heat extremes. Credit: Zhenzhong Zeng

Scientists Uncover Hidden Forces Driving Record Ocean Heat Waves

Differences in SEDs, spectroscopic features, and spatial morphologies among various types of celestial objects. From top to bottom, the examples shown correspond to a galaxy, a quasar, and a star. The spectroscopic data are from SDSS, while the SEDs and image data are from the KiDS. Credit: Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (2025). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/adde5a

A New AI Sees the Universe More Clearly Than Ever Before

smallintesti

What AI Just Uncovered About the Silent Disease Millions Suffer In Silence

Results and comparison of 16 fine-mapping analyses conducted. The barplot displays the number of SNPs fine-mapped with PIP > 0.5 and part of a 95% credible set on the y axis and each fine-mapping analysis on the x axis. The black bordered bars indicate the number of SNPs fine-mapped with PIP > 0.95 and part of a 95% credible set. Each analysis is named according to (LD option)_(fine-mapping method). The heatmap displays the Jaccard index of concordance in results between each pair of fine-mapping analyses, calculated based on SNPs with PIP > 0.5 and part of a 95% credible set. Jaccard indices ranged from 0.25 to 1 (mean = 0.54, s.d. = 0.20), with higher values indicating more similar fine-mapping results. Credit: Koromina et al. (Nature Neuroscience, 2025).

The Hidden Genetic Code Behind Bipolar Disorder Finally Comes to Light

Coated floss enables delivery across the JE. Credit: Nature Biomedical Engineering (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-025-01451-3

The Secret Power Hidden Between Your Teeth Could Save Millions

Two proteins, FOXA2 and NKX2-1, play a central role in the process of reprogramming the cancer cells into a deadlier form, NEPC, turning on a new set of oncogenes via p300. CCS1477 is a type of inhibiting drug that could target the moving targets, thus stop the growth of both forms of prostate cancer. Credit: Nature Genetics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-025-02265-4

Scientists Uncover How Prostate Cancer Becomes Its Deadliest Form and How to Stop It

couple-1

The Male Birth Control Pill That Could Change Everything We Know About Reproductive Freedom

Example images of excitatory neurons from the cerebral cortexes of humanized mice showing how the neurons from the humanized mice grew more dendrites. Credit: Dr. Yuxiang Liu

The Sleep Gene That May Have Helped Build the Human Mind

Artistic illustration of a topological exciton insulator: Excitons condense in the bulk of the material, forming a collective insulating phase, while topologically protected edge modes propagate freely along the sample's boundary. Credit: Md Shafayat Hossain

Scientists Discover a New Quantum Phase That Defies the Rules of Matter

Human and DNN categorization of (left): a standard RGB image. (Middle): a contour-extracted image. (Right): a fragmented image requiring contour integration. The vast majority of more than 1,000 tested models catastrophically fail at a categorization task the moment object contours are fragmented. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2504.05253

Why Your Brain Sees What AI Still Can’t Understand

A system capable of generating images normally requires a tokenizer, which compresses and encodes visual data, along with a generator that can combine and arrange these compact representations in order to create novel images. MIT researchers discovered a new method to create, convert, and "inpaint" images without using a generator at all. This image shows how an input image can be gradually modified by optimizing tokens. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This AI Turns Random Noise Into Stunning Images Without Ever Being Trained

3d printing of stainless steel electrodes. a) Conceptual illustration of the 3D printing process for fabricating stainless steel electrodes. b) Photographs of 3D-printed stainless steel structures in various sizes and from different angles, accompanied by a table detailing their dimensions and volumes. Credit: Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research (2025). DOI: 10.1002/aesr.202500199

Steel Bones and Living Cells Are Powering a New Energy Era

Solvent-free transfer printing enables uniform alumina–gold dual-layer coatings on lithium metal, overcoming interfacial and process limitations of conventional methods. Credit: Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT)

Scientists Just Solved the Biggest Problem Holding Back the Battery of the Future

The SCRUBB arm can clean everyday surfaces, for instance scrubbing dried ketchup from a plate. Credit: Jakub Kowalewski.

The Soft Robotic Arm That Could Finally Make Cleaning Effortless

Restoration of a damaged inscription. Credit: Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09292-5

AI Listens to Ancient Rome and Finds Voices Lost for Centuries

Experiment overview. Credit: Nature Electronics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-025-01404-3

This Quantum Computer Builds Itself Like Lego and It Might Change Everything

Screenshot of a Datavzrd report with annotated visual elements and controls. Credit: PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323079

This Simple Tool Transforms Raw Data into Living Science

Sorting tasks are ubiquitous in numerous applications. CPU/GPU or ASIC-based sorting systems employ massive comparison units. The performance is limited by CMOS devices and the bandwidth between memory and comparison units. Sort-near-memory alleviates the bandwidth bottleneck. Sort-in-memory based on memristor-aided logic utilizes memristors but still relies on comparison operations. Our comparison-free MSIM with TNS/CA-TNS strategies resolves the three bottlenecks. Credit: Yu et al.

The Memory Chip That Sorts Itself Is Reshaping the Future of Computing

Proactive slip control architecture. Credit: Nature Machine Intelligence (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-025-01062-2

Robots Just Learned the Human Secret to Holding Without Dropping

Silent error in BLOOM-176B training. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2506.14813

The AI Mistakes You Never See Until It’s Too Late