Explore the latest scientific discoveries, science news, breakthroughs and developments from around the world.
Scientists have uncovered a surprising cause of age-related cognitive decline involving brain cells previously thought to be entirely beneficial. As these cells become dysfunctional, they can produce abnormal amounts of myelin, disrupting nerve fibers and potentially contributing to worsening memory and thinking skills.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a turbulent world 20 light-years away has a surprisingly orderly weather system, with three recurring atmospheric states driven by temperature changes and shifting clouds. The breakthrough gives scientists a powerful new tool for uncovering weather patterns on distant worlds and understanding the conditions that shape their atmospheres.
In a discovery that could offer a new way to control quantum properties in two-dimensional materials, researchers at Cornell have found that electrically sliding the layers of ultrathin graphene can switch the material between distinct magnetic states that persist even after the voltage is removed.
Poor access to health care, limited local influence over research priorities and an unequal distribution of scientific benefits are undermining public confidence in science, experts warn, following the release of a global trust survey.
When temperatures spike, California redwoods slow down photosynthesis, new research has found. This finding has serious implications for the long-term survival of the iconic trees in a warming world, and their role in storing carbon from the atmosphere.California redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests are among the largest aboveground carbon stores on the planet. These towering trees are native to central and northern California, and evolved to take advantage of the region's historically mild weather. In recent decades, their range has contracted significantly. But climate change is threatening the health and function of these forests.The region has seen significant warming in recent decades...
Scientists have discovered that some forest soils are becoming surprisingly better at removing methane from the atmosphere as temperatures rise and rainfall declines. A study spanning up to 24 years found methane absorption increasing by an average of 3% annually, challenging previous predictions about climate change's effects on forests.
New research from Michigan State University finds that popular music has gradually become less explicit about emotion and relationships—both across generations of artists and within artists' careers.
The strong El Niño currently under way in the Pacific Ocean raises the specter of marine heat waves and coral bleaching once again threatening Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef. And now new research has revealed the complex interplay of atmospheric patterns and weather systems thousands of kilometers apart that can combine in a recipe potentially fatal for coral reefs.
Recent research challenges a long-standing idea about how the brain develops: Rather than arising from a single source, the brain may emerge from two distinct populations of cells, the study finds."The brain appears as one organ," said study co-author Kyle Loh, an associate professor of developmental biology at Stanford University. "However, we discovered that the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain come from different sources, which are pushed together to create the appearance of a single organ," Loh told Live Science in an email.The findings, published in September in the journal Nature Neuroscience, not only challenge established models of how the brain forms but may al...
A new discovery reveals how plants protect themselves from microbes in rotting material
Sometimes, it takes a great struggle to build towering peaks. And what more thunderous event is there than the clashing of continental plates? Geological pileups have birthed some of the largest and tallest mountains on the planet, including Mount Everest and its Himalayan neighbors. But has there ever been a peak taller than Mount Everest, which stands 29,032 feet (8,849 meters) above sea level? The answer is still a mystery, but there are some geological clues about where the tallest peaks would have been in the ancient past, experts told Live Science. Earth's lost mountainsGeologists don't have the level of detail required to pinpoint an exact highest peak hundreds of millions of years ag...
A new 4,300-mile (7,000-kilometer) undersea fiber cable will shuttle data between the U.S. and France at breakneck speeds of up to 1 million gigabits per second (Gbps) — enough to move around 125 terabytes of data every second, or roughly 25,000 HD movies, each 5 gigabytes large. The cable, called Petal, will be funded and operated by Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta.When it comes online in 2029, the ocean-spanning cable will be the first to deliver petabit capacity — double the capacity of existing subsea cables of this length — across transoceanic distances, Meta representatives said in a statement. That's enough to allow 75% of the world's population to stream music at once.Peta...