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

Illustration in a 12th century homiliary, showing a self-portrait of the female scribe and illuminator Guda. Credit: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04666-6

New Study Reveals Significant Role of Women in Medieval Manuscript Production

Multiwavelength-Crab-Nebula

Why Do Some Stars Explode While Others Fade Away?

66a016602d66759f66fd8cfc

The Invisible Universe: How Infrared and X-rays Reveal the Cosmos

Stars-NGC-290-Hubble-Space-Telescope (1)

How Astronomers Weigh Planets and Stars

FullMoon2010

The Moon’s Influence on Earth’s Climate and Life

Dyson_Swarm_realistic_representation_cropped

Can We Build a Dyson Sphere? Harvesting Energy from the Sun

Exoplanet-960×640

The Darkest Planets: Exploring Light-Absorbing Worlds

Discovery of dimeric amide alkaloid enantiomers by a molecular network-based dereplication strategy from Piper longum fruits and their bioactivities. Credit: Prof. Haji Akber Aisa’s team

New Anti-Inflammatory and Antidiabetic Compounds Discovered in Piper longum

Perspective view of Kalkaska crater and the Heart Lake system from CTX-MOLA DTM mosaic over global CTX mosaic. Credit: Berman & Williams (2025)

Glacial Activity and Subglacial Melting Shaped Mars’ Arabia Terra

heic1312a

The Strangest Exoplanets Ever Discovered

_9b884190-4db4-4783-8b60-b76cefe5a3e9

Quantum Entanglement Unveiled in Strange Metals

A quantum circuit showing a fast measurement outcome for two qubits is the same as a slow measurement outcome for one qubit. Credit: Chris Corlett

New Technique Slashes Quantum Measurement Time Using Ancillary Qubits

oss2

Can Planets Escape Their Orbits? The Fate of Rogue Worlds

heic1321a-29dcefe-scaled-e1602578090372 (1)

Do Stars Have Weather? Exploring Stellar Storms

This artist's impression shows the effects of the collapse and supernova explosion of a massive star. A black hole (right) was formed in the collapse and debris from the supernova explosion is raining down onto a companion star (left), polluting its atmosphere. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss

Supernova Archaeology: Unraveling the History of a Star’s Fiery Demise

NA61/SHINE’s lead-scintillator calorimeter. Credit: CERN

Unexpected Kaon Asymmetry Challenges Particle Physics Understanding

The computational capacities of aneural organisms and neurons have been drastically underestimated by considering only classical information channels such as ionic flows and action potentials, which achieve maximum computing speeds of ∼103 ops/s. However, it has been recently confirmed by fluorescence quantum yield experiments that large networks of quantum emitters in cytoskeletal polymers support superradiant states at room temperature, with maximum speeds of ∼1012 to 1013 ops/s, more than a billion times faster and within two orders of magnitude of the Margolus-Levitin limit for ultraviolet-photoexcited states. These protein networks of quantum emitters are found in both aneural eukaryotic organisms as well as in stable, organized bundles in neuronal axons. In this single-author research article in Science Advances, quantitative comparisons are made between the computations that can have been performed by all superradiant life in the history of our planet, and the computations that can have been performed by the entire matter-dominated universe with which such life is causally connected. Estimates made for human-made classical computers and future quantum computers with effective error correction motivate a reevaluation of the role of life, computing with quantum degrees of freedom, and artificial intelligences in the cosmos. Credit: Quantum Biology Laboratory, Philip Kurian.

Quantum Biology Breakthrough: Redefining Life’s Computational Capacity

Credit: Type One Energy.

Fusion Energy: A New Physics Design Basis for a Cleaner Future

Schematics of thermopower measurements. Fig.1: Schematics of thermopower measurements in MATBG. In a thermopower measurement one end of the material is heated while the other end is kept cooler (labeled as "Hot" and "Cold"). Then the thermally induced voltage is measured. Open and filled circles, indicate the thermally induced diffusion of holes and electrons in response to a temperature gradient. Credit: Fereshte Ghahari.

New Method Using Thermopower Detects Fragile Fractional Quantum Hall States

asteroid-alamy

Could an Asteroid Impact Destroy Civilization?

This artist's impression shows the dust torus around a super-massive black hole. Black holes lurk at the centres of active galaxies in environments not unlike those found in violent tornadoes on Earth. Just as in a tornado, where debris is often found spinning about the vortex, so in a black hole, a dust torus surrounds its waist. In some cases astronomers can look along the axis of the dust torus from above or from below and have a clear view of the black hole. Technically these objects are then called "type 1 sources". "Type 2 sources" lie with the dust torus edge-on as viewed from Earth so our view of the black hole is totally blocked by the dust over a range of wavelengths from the near-infrared to soft X-rays. While many dust-obscured low-power black holes (called "Seyfert 2s") were known, until recently few of their high-power counterparts were known. The identification of a population of high-power obscured black holes and the active galaxies surrounding them has been a key goal for astronomers and will lead to greater understanding and a refinement of the cosmological models describing our Universe. The European AVO science team led by Paolo Padovani from Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility and the European Southern Observatory in Munich, Germany, has discovered a whole population of the obscured, powerful supermassive black holes. Thirty of these objects were found in the so-called GOODS (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey) fields. The GOODS survey consists of two areas that include some of the deepest observations from space- and ground-based telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and have become the best studied patches in the sky. In the illustration the jets coming out of the regions nearest the black hole are also seen. The jets emerge from an area close to the black hole where a disk of accreted material rotates (not seen here).

How Black Holes Shape the Evolution of Galaxies

uy-scuti-vs-sun-comparison-768×439

The Largest Known Star: A Monster in the Cosmos

images (5)

How to Survive in Space: The Science of Space Suits

p1414aw_0-jpg

The Great Attractor: A Massive Mystery in Space

As it sped away from Venus, NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft on February 7, 1974, captured this seemingly peaceful view of the planet, nearly the size of Earth, wrapped in a dense, global cloud layer. The clouded globe of Venus is a world of intense heat, crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds of corrosive acid. NASA/JPL-Caltech via REUTERS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY.

Can We Terraform Venus? The Challenge of Earth’s Evil Twin

images (4)

The Future of Astronomy: AI and Space Exploration

file-20220523-11-z3t5y6

Voyager 1: Humanity’s First Messenger to the Stars

_57d0d12b-d546-47f2-bd81-5480769e3fd1

AI in Everyday Life: How Smart Algorithms Are Changing Everything

_7da919fd-7abb-4108-b1e4-5b952fdfc681

The Ethics of AI: Should We Fear Superintelligent Machines?

1_zO1deDdcSlVyBFiS6hKnxw

How AI Is Transforming Healthcare: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Beyond