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

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How We Detect Distant Worlds with Telescopes

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What Is the Event Horizon Telescope?

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Hubble Telescope Discoveries That Blew Our Minds

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How the James Webb Space Telescope Is Changing Astronomy

(a) The functional reading network (n = 163) across all experiments, with contributions of the cerebellum. (b) The functional reading network for individual processing levels, including the main effect of letters (n = 7), words (n = 109), sentences (n = 33) and texts (n = 8). All meta-analytic maps were thresholded at a voxel-wise p < 0.001 and a cluster-wise p < 0.05 FWE-corrected. Credit: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106166

Unlocking the Reading Brain: How Our Minds Decipher Written Language

Schematic of the cursor BCI. Credit: Tyler Singer-Clark et al

New Brain-Computer Interface Uses Speech Cortex to Control Computers

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Space Debris: A Growing Problem in Orbit

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NASA vs. SpaceX: The Race for the Future

What Is the Artemis Mission to the Moon?

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Will Humans Ever Live on Mars?

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The Greatest Space Missions of All Time

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Multiverse Theory: Are There Infinite Universes?

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What Is Cosmic Inflation?

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How Fast Is the Universe Expanding?

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Skin-to-Skin Contact at Birth Fails to Boost Brain Development in Preterm Infants, Study Finds

Illustration based on figure from the paper. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2406684122

How the Brain Builds a World: Visual Perception, Feedback, and the Power of Experience

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Are Wormholes Real?

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The Big Bang Theory Explained Simply

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What Is the Expanding Universe?

Schematic diagram of the inflammatory RNA editing model in Parkinson's disease. Credit: Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp8504

New Study Reveals RNA Editing Enzyme Fuels Brain Inflammation in Parkinson’s

A simulation of a broadly neutralizing antibody (dark and light blue chains) binding to the HIV-1 viral membrane. The membrane comprises lipids and cholesterol (gray sticks) and phosphates (orange spheres). Credit: Scripps Research

Cracking the Lipid Code: How Antibodies Use Fat to Fight HIV

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The Silent Crisis: How the Loss of Experienced Elephants Endangers Elephant Societies

During the formose reaction, formaldehyde molecules (red) spontaneously and repeatedly react with each other to create larger molecules. Scripps Research scientists show that this reaction does not result in the production of linear sugars, like ribose (pink), which are the essential building blocks of life. Credit: Scripps Research

Rethinking the Origins of Life’s Sweet Beginnings

Morphology and shape morphing in rose petals. Credit: Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adt0672. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt0672

The Secret Geometry of Roses: How Physics Explains the Flower’s Unique Beauty

NICER time-averaged spectrum of all monitoring observations (2023–2024) of IGR J12580+0134. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2504.18558

NICER Detects Star Shredded by Black Hole Just 59 Million Light-Years Away

G359.13, The Bone. Credit: NASA

Galactic Spine Fractured by a Rogue Pulsar, Say Astronomers

This new picture created from images from telescopes on the ground and in space tells the story of the hunt for an elusive missing object hidden amid a complex tangle of gaseous filaments in one of our nearest neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The reddish background image comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and reveals the wisps of gas forming the supernova remnant 1E 0102.2-7219 in green. The red ring with a dark centre is from the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the blue and purple images are from the NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The blue spot at the centre of the red ring is an isolated neutron star with a weak magnetic field, the first identified outside the Milky Way.

How Do Stars Die?

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What Are Exoplanets and How Do We Find Them?

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The Difference Between a Nova and a Supernova

Shining brightly in this Hubble image is our closest stellar neighbour: Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri lies in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), just over four light-years from Earth. Although it looks bright through the eye of Hubble, as you might expect from the nearest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri is not visible to the naked eye. Its average luminosity is very low, and it is quite small compared to other stars, at only about an eighth of the mass of the Sun. However, on occasion, its brightness increases. Proxima is what is known as a “flare star”, meaning that convection processes within the star’s body make it prone to random and dramatic changes in brightness. The convection processes not only trigger brilliant bursts of starlight but, combined with other factors, mean that Proxima Centauri is in for a very long life. Astronomers predict that this star will remain middle-aged — or a “main sequence” star in astronomical terms — for another four trillion years, some 300 times the age of the current Universe. These observations were taken using Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Proxima Centauri is actually part of a triple star system — its two companions, Alpha Centauri A and B, lie out of frame. Although by cosmic standards it is a close neighbour, Proxima Centauri remains a point-like object even using Hubble’s eagle-eyed vision, hinting at the vast scale of the Universe around us.

The Closest Stars to Earth (Besides the Sun)