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

47 Tucanae is the second-brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way and is home to millions of stars. Its core is very small and very bright, and discerning individual stars in the core is a rigorous test for the Vera Rubin Observatory. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: J. Mack (STScI) and G. Piotto (University of Padova, Italy)

Vera Rubin Observatory Peers Into the Heart of a Star-Crowded Cosmic Relic

X-ray images of G54.1+0.3. Solid (dotted) circles indicate the source (background) spectral extraction regions for the NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal (2025). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/add92e

Astronomers Unlock Secrets of Pulsar’s Mysterious Wind Nebula

Infrared images from the James Webb Space Telescope combine three wavelengths of light to reveal the dusty shells around each Wolf-Rayet (WR) star. Credit: James Webb Space Telescope

How Dying Stars Are Creating the Building Blocks for New Worlds

Hubble image of intracluster light emitted from far away galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Montes (University of New South Wales)

The Mystery of the First Stars and the Role of Primordial Black Holes

Gut microbiome, conceptual illustration

America’s Babies Are Missing Gut Guardians That Protect Them for Life

Beautiful young woman sleeping in bed at night

The Hidden Heart Risks of Sleeping in Brightness

Graphical abstract. Credit: Current Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.05.057

When Vision Fades, the Eye Fights Back with Hidden Networks

An artist's reconstruction of the fossilized landscape, plants and animals found preserved in a remote bonebed in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by paleontologist Ben Kligman, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, present the fossilized jawbone of a new pterosaur species and describe the sea gull-sized flying reptile along with hundreds of other fossils they unearthed from the site. These fossils, which date back to the late Triassic period around 209 million years ago, preserve a snapshot of a dynamic ecosystem where older groups of animals lived with evolutionary upstarts. The newly described pterosaur Eotephradactylus mcintireae is seen eating an ancient ray-finned fish alongside an early species of turtle and an early frog species, with the skeleton of an armored crocodile relative lying on the ground and a palm-like plant growing in the background. Credit: Brian Engh.

The Tiny Ash-Winged Dinosaur Cousin That Took Flight 209 Million Years Ago

A photo from a helicopter looking at the northeast flank of Mocho-Choshuenco volcano covered by ice. Credit: Geological Society of America Bulletin (2024). DOI: 10.1130/B37514.1

Hidden Volcanoes May Explode as Ice Disappears

Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/P.Vosteen

Ice Clouds Drift Inside the Milky Way’s Fiery Heart

Visual representation of the structure of low-density amorphous ice. Many tiny crystallites (white) are concealed in the amorphous material (blue). Credit: Michael B Davies, UCL and University of Cambridge

Space Ice Hides Tiny Crystals That Could Rewrite the Origins of Life

If we are located in a region with below-average density such as the green dot, then matter would flow away from us due to stronger gravity from the surrounding denser regions, as shown by the red arrows. Credit: Moritz Haslbauer and Zarija Lukic

Are We Living in a Giant Cosmic Bubble That Warps the Universe’s Expansion?

Seeds-660×330 (1)

Seeds That Sleep for Centuries—Then Suddenly Wake Up

Mimosa pudica.

How Some Plants Remember and Learn Without a Brain

Amorphophallus titanum.

The Creepy Genius of the Corpse Flower

Venus flytrap.

This Plant Can Move Like an Animal—Watch It Hunt

pexels-umkreisel-app-1080400

Can Trees Really Communicate Through a “Wood Wide Web”?

Light curve of the variable star Grigoriev 1 from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) project. Green circles—observations in g filter, red diamonds—in r filter. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2507.01005

Newly Discovered “Grigoriev 1” Star Unveils a Cosmic Eclipse Drama in Pegasus

An e-MERLIN map showing the tilted disk structure around the young star DG Tauri where pebble-sized clumps are beginning to form. Its long axis is southeast to northwest (lower left to upper right). Emission from an outflow of material from the central star is also seen in the northeast and southwest directions. Credit: Hesterly, Drabek-Maunder, Greaves, Richards, et al/CC BY 4.0

Pebbles in Space Reveal How New Worlds Are Born

Artistic representation of a dark dwarf. Credit: Sissa Medialab

Hidden Stars Could Unlock the Secrets of Dark Matter

Equisetum. Credit: iStock

The Ancient Plant That Survived Dinosaurs—and Might Outlive Us

Pando.

Inside the World’s Oldest Living Organism

Nicotiana tabacum. Credit: Wikipedia

Plants That Glow in the Dark—and the Science Behind Their Light

Dracaena cinnabari. Credit: iStock

Why Do Some Plants Bleed When They’re Hurt?

Agave americana. Credit: iStock

The Flower That Blooms Once Every Century—and Why It Matters

venus-flytrap-shk-1

Meet the Plant That Can Eat Meat and Lie in Wait

sea-of-clouds-6994730_1920

How a Forest Thinks: The Hidden Intelligence of Plants

Bristlecone-pine-Mount-Washington-Great-Basin-National-Park-Nevada

This Tree Can Live for 5,000 Years—And It’s Still Growing

clover-3430247_1920

What Plants Talk About When No One’s Watching

istockphoto-119809329-612×612

The Secret Lives of Trees You Never Knew Existed