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What billiard balls reveal about computers and the limits of prediction
When is a billiard ball not a billiard ball? When mathematicians get involved and view a popular game as a model computer.
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Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
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Microcrystal electron diffractometer brings hidden hydrogen into focus
Hydrogen—the lightest atom—does the heavy lifting when it comes to important chemical reactions. It can be stored and released as clean fuel, and its movements help catalysts build medicines, fertilizers and materials. One way hydrogen is available for use is through a hydride—a hydrogen (H) atom bound to a metal. Yet with standard tools, this metal-bound atom can be hard to find in the structure.
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VR boosts English vocabulary scores for students with dyslexia, pilot study finds
Virtual reality (VR) could be a new tool to help students with dyslexia learn English vocabulary more effectively than conventional instruction alone, according to a pilot study involving 30 learners published in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning. Dyslexia is a learning disability that primarily affects reading and related language skills.
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Vera C. Rubin Observatory detects one of the smallest and faintest satellite galaxies ever seen
In one of the first major discoveries from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, scientists have revealed a previously unknown galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. Described in a study that hasn’t been peer-reviewed, the galaxy, named Aquarius IV, is one of the lightest, faintest and farthest satellite galaxies ever seen. This dim cluster of ancient stars was discovered on the extreme periphery of the Milky Way in early test data from the Rubin Observatory, offering a glimpse of the telescope's impressive abilities and shedding new light on our cosmic neighborhood. Ultrafaint dwarf galaxies (UFDGs) are among the tiniest and faintest galaxies in the universe. These dim little clusters contain at ...
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Antibiotic resistance research calls for tests that reflect bacteria's changing environments
The World Health Organization (WHO) regards antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, as one of the world's major health challenges. A new fundamental understanding of antibiotic resistance could therefore potentially have a far-reaching impact on global public health, animal health and the environment.
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Briny 'death pools' hold clues to early life
The origins of the earliest life on Earth, prior to the rise of oxygen and photosynthesis, remain a mystery. Graveyards in brine pools at the bottom of the Red Sea may hold some answers.
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Astronomers detect radio signals coming from an exoplanet for the first time
Exoplanets are exotic worlds orbiting distant stars far beyond our solar system. Ever since the first ones were discovered in the 1990s, astronomers have turned their attention to these distant worlds to understand more about them. Now, for the first time, scientists have detected radio signals coming directly from one of these planets, a massive gas giant named β Pictoris b.
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Day and night get equal billing on Tuesday. A guide to the fall equinox
The fall equinox is Tuesday, when light and darkness split the day evenly. It marks the beginning of fall for the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
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New statistical methods could lead to more reliable research findings
How much can we really trust a measurement? And how much data do researchers need to collect to draw reliable conclusions? Mohammad Reza Seydi at Umeå University has developed and tested new statistical methods to provide better answers to those questions.
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Emissions from the past decade have made Europe's recent heat waves worse
Recent heat waves in Europe have been intensified by the greenhouse gases emitted since nations committed to limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to a Sep. 22 study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
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US heading for unprecedented El Niño winter: Here's what to expect
The ongoing El Niño is breaching the "super" threshold as Earth crosses into unprecedented climate territory. El Niño, officially underway as of June 11, is a climate pattern that's injecting extra heat into our already-warming world, threatening disruptive weather across the globe and a humanitarian crisis in some regions.While El Niño is part of a natural multiyear climate cycle, scientists have noticed that it has been rapidly strengthening like never before, intensified by human-driven climate change, and putting stressed natural systems under extra strain.In a new update this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center continues to foreca...
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Gold nanoplasmonic chip tracks L-DOPA response in Parkinson's 'mini-brains'
Researchers have developed an organoid-on-a-chip technology that verifies the efficacy of Parkinson's disease treatments in real time. The technology combines a stem cell–derived "mini-brain" with a nanoplasmonic sensor engineered to maximize light–matter interaction.
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3I/ATLAS has an extreme taste for heavy water
More and more details about 3I/ATLAS are filtering through the scientific process as time goes on. Our third known interstellar visitor attracted the attention of some of the world's most powerful observatories when it was discovered in July 2025, and some of those telescopes found something peculiar—the isotopes it contained appeared different. A new paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters (and available as a preprint on arXiv) by Kenji Furuya of the RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute in Japan and his co-authors shows that the isotopic discrepancy is likely due to the "low metallicity" of the stellar nursery in which 3I/ATLAS was born.
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Can AI reason without words? A small model puts the idea to the test
The newest “Dragon Hatchling” AI model is testing whether skipping words in intermediate reasoning could cut computational cost.
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Trump rejects AI regulation, citing parallels with climate change, in U.N. address
The president also said artificial intelligence should be rebranded as “super intelligence”
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Scientists identify 'sweet spot' for early stage of life on Earth that preceded LUCA, the ancestor of all living things
Scientists have identified a "sweet spot" in Earth's deep past when conditions were optimal for a proposed early stage of life to take hold — a phase known as the RNA World.The sweet spot was 4.33 billion years ago, although Earth may have become suitable for the RNA World as early as 4.4 billion years ago, given that extreme bombardment by asteroids, comets and other rocky leftovers of planet formation had largely stopped by then, the researchers reported in a study published Tuesday (Sept. 22) in the journal Nature Communications.The findings give a more precise estimate of the RNA World's onset than previous studies based on geochemical modeling, biomolecular analyses and simulations of e...
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Methane beneath the Greenland ice sheet shapes microbial life and influences the carbon cycle
A new study involving researchers from the Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, shows that methane concentration is among the key factors determining the composition of microbial communities at the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The findings, published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, provide new insights into processes that influence carbon and methane cycling in a rapidly warming Arctic.
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Milky Way's first microblazar may produce fastest particles in the galaxy
An international team of astronomers from ASTRON, JIVE, the University of Amsterdam and other institutions has found the first so-called "microblazar" in the Milky Way. This stellar system is composed of a massive star and a black hole with a jet that is pointed toward Earth. The researchers also identified the region where the jet hits a molecular cloud as a place where particles are accelerated to ultra-high energies, likely up to petaelectronvolts. This would make microblazars one of the most powerful particle accelerators in the galaxy. The research was appears in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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Can a long-lived seabird evolve fast enough to avoid extinction under a changing climate?
As the climate changes, species face a critical question: Can they evolve quickly enough to keep pace with their changing environment?
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UN warns super El Niño a 'significant' threat to world health
El Niño represents a "significant" threat to global health, the United Nations warned Tuesday, as the world braces for a cycle of the climate phenomenon predicted to be the most intense on record.