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Articles by Science News Today

Fish otoliths—the calcium carbonate structures found in fishes' inner ears—from human harvested fish, prey fish (those eaten by predatory fish) and reef-sheltered fish (also known as cryptobentic fish) found in 7000 year-old fossilized Caribbean reefs from Panama and the Dominican Republic. Credit: Erin Dillon

When Sharks Vanished the Reefs Changed Forever

The catalyst consists of single platinum atoms (red) surrounded by nitrogen (blue) and carbon atoms (gray). Using nuclear magnetic resonance, such atomic environments can now be precisely studied for the first time. Credit: Javier Pérez-Ramírez / ETH Zürich

Scientists Unlock the Secret Lives of Single Platinum Atoms

Using a global ocean model, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, and the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, Fukushima University, found that short- and long-term contribution of treated water released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on oceanic tritium concentration beyond the vicinity of the discharge site is negligible, even in climate change scenarios. Credit: Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo

What Happens When Treated Fukushima Water Reaches the Ocean

Pre-extinction tropical rainforest seed fern, Gigantopteris, (giant leaves). Credit: Dr Zhen Xu.

When Ancient Forests Fell the Earth Burned for Five Million Years

Digitization and adiabatic energy gap. a The procedure to digitize an adiabatic evolution is done through a Riemann-like discretization of the time interval s ∈ [0, 1], where each step in time corresponds to the digital block. The time-continuous adiabatic algorithm implemented through time-dependent fields can be efficiently decomposed in a sequence of pulses through a circuit version of the evolution. After M blocks the output state is expected to be prepared with good fidelity without any computation complexity due to the search for the optimal parameters of the circuit. b The only optimization required to reduce the circuit length is done through the suitable choice of the parameters of the Hamiltonian. The a priori knowledge of the parameters of the Hamiltonian, which leads to a large energy gap, will enhance the digitized algorithm. Credit: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57812-8

Quantum Computers Just Simulated the Moment Order Was Born from Chaos

The MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile captured this colorful view of the bright star cluster NGC 3532. Some of the stars still shine with a hot bluish color, but many of the more massive ones have become red giants and glow with a rich orange hue. Credit: ESO/G. Beccari

AI Unlocks the Secret Clocks Hidden in Stars

Facial reconstruction of the individual from Nuwayrat using 3D scan data of the skull and analysis of the bones. The skull and idea of his face are overlaid to create one image. Credit: Caroline Wilkinson, Liverpool John Moores University. As in Morez, A. (2025). Nature.

He Lived When the Pyramids Rose Now His DNA Tells a Forgotten Story

The stone tools discovered in Marathousa 1 demonstrate the targeted use of various techniques—depending on material and function. Credit: PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0324958

Ancient Humans Butchered Elephants with Stone Tools in Greece 430,000 Years Ago

Being bombarded with so much high-energy radiation does not bode well for HIP 67522 b. The planet is similar in size to Jupiter but has the density of candy floss, making it one of the wispiest exoplanets ever found. Over time, the radiation carried by the flares is eroding away the planet's wispy atmosphere, meaning it is losing mass much faster than we thought. In the next 100 million years, HIP 67522 b could go from an almost Jupiter-sized planet to a much smaller Neptune-sized planet. Credit: Janine Fohlmeister (Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam)

This Planet Is Triggering Its Own Star’s Deadly Flares

Artist’s illustration of CRISTAL-13. Dust-rich regions obscure newborn stars, whose energy is re-emitted at ALMA’s millimeter wavelengths. Right: young star clusters clear the dust and shine visibly in JWST and HST images. Credit: NSF/AUI/NRAO/B. Saxton

Galaxies Caught in the Act of Forming Just One Billion Years After the Big Bang

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of an X5.8 solar flare peaking at 9:23 p.m. EDT on May 10, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares. Credit: NASA SDO

The Scientist Racing the Sun to Protect Our Satellites

The fossil Sphenodraco scandentis: counterplate with most of the bones under UV light, Natural History Museum in London. Credit: Victor Beccari, SNSB/LMU

Ancient Climbing Reptile Discovered After Nearly a Century of Separation

Evolution of the flare at AIA 304, 131, and 1600 Å observations. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal (2025). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/add92d

The Sun’s Electric Heartbeat Tracked During Powerful Solar Flare

TESS PDCSAP phase-folded light curves of TOI-1846. The blue and green points are unbinned and binned (2-minutes) data. The solid line shows the best-fitting transit model. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2506.18550

Astronomers Discover a Steamy Super-Earth Just 154 Light-Years Away

This image, taken with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5. These are the expanding remains of a star that exploded hundreds of years ago in a double-detonation – the first photographic evidence that stars can die with two blasts. The data were captured with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the VLT. MUSE allows astronomers to map the distribution of different chemical elements, displayed here in different colors. Calcium is shown in blue, and it is arranged in two concentric shells. These two layers indicate that the now-dead star exploded with a double-detonation. Credit: ESO/P. Das et al. Background stars (Hubble): K. Noll et al.

This Supernova Didn’t Explode Once It Exploded Twice

A 3D image obtained by X-ray microtomography of a macroscopic multicellular organism dated to 2.1 billion years ago (Francevillian Basin, Gabon). Scale bar = 1 cm. Credit: Arnaud Mazurier and Abderrazak El Albani

Ancient Life Fought Poison with Strategy Not Strength

The locations of Late Archaic/Terminal and Early Formative sites. Credit: Antiquity (2025). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2025.40

Hunter Gatherers Built Sacred Structures Thousands of Years Before Power Systems Emerged

Fish remains from the bottom of a salting vat, as they were found (a) and separated into spines (b), vertebrae (c) and scales (d). Credit: Archaeology Department of the University of Vigo, from Antiquity (2025). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2025.73. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.73

Ancient DNA from Roman Fish Sauce Reveals Secrets Hidden for Centuries

Bridge of the Roman aqueduct in Arles. Credit: Cees Passchier

Ancient Limescale Reveals Secrets of a Lost Roman Water Network

The cuneiform tablet with the newly discovered hymn. Credit: Anmar A. Fadhil, Department of Archaeology, University of Baghdad, with the permission of the Iraqi Museum and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage

Babylon Speaks Again After a Thousand Years Through a Lost Hymn and AI

An illustration of high-velocity clouds composed of molecular gas inflowing from outside the galaxy. Credit: Created with ChatGPT/DALL·E

Galactic Discovery Uncovers Mysterious Gas Clouds Fueling Star Birth

Advancements in material technologies are needed to meet the science needs of the next great observatories. These observatories will strive to find, identify, and study exoplanets and their ability to support life. Credit: NASA JPL

The Metal That Shrinks When Heated Could Help NASA Find Alien Life

VLA 6 GHz image of Abell 2744. The shaded regions indicate the area covered by the DUALZ Survey uv-tapered image. The cyan contour outlines the JWST footprint from the UNCOVER survey, while the yellow contour marks the HST footprint from the same survey. Green circles and numbers denote the positions and short IDs of the radio sources detected in the study. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2506.20634

Astronomers Capture the Deepest Radio Glimpse of Pandora’s Cluster

A Water snail resembling the organism examined by the researchers. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Water_snail_Rex_2.jpg

Scientists Discover Snails Can Feel Anxiety and Even Respond to Medication

New study shows that chimpanzee moms with stronger social ties are more likely to raise surviving babies, even without help from kin. Credit: Madua Musa

Chimpanzee Friendships Help Mothers Keep Their Babies Alive

Images of selected provisioning attempts. (A) A juvenile killer whale NZ155 (Fossey) offers a piece of eagle ray liver to Ingrid N. Visser underwater in the Western South Pacific. Video frame grab: Steve Hathaway. (B) A killer whale offers a whole mobula ray to Leonardo González on a boat in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Photo: Lucía Corral. (C) Lone juvenile female killer whale T046C2 (Sam) about to retrieve a whole harbor seal after offering it to Jared R. Towers and colleagues on a boat in the Eastern North Pacific. Photo: Jared R. Towers. (D) An adult female killer whale NZ51 (Dian) retrieves most of an eagle ray after offering it to Brian Skerry underwater in the Western South Pacific. Photo: Brian Skerry. Credit: Journal of Comparative Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1037/com0000422

Orcas Are Giving Humans Gifts and Scientists Think It’s On Purpose

Design concept and bandstructure renormalization via entropy engineering. Credit: Advanced Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202503319

Scientists Solve 40-Year Quantum Mystery with Energy-Loss-Free Breakthrough

Alberto De la Torre used controlled heating and cooling to make a quantum material switch between a conductive state and an insulating state. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Scientists Discover Quantum Material That Could Replace Silicon Forever

The Southern Ocean. Credit: University of Southampton

Antarctica’s Sea Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Anyone Predicted

Variety of dairy products on the table outdoors

Too Much Dairy Could Be Fueling Your Nightmares