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A space shark, 'royal' auroras and a 'Venusian pearl': See the winners of the 2026 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest
Science News

A space shark, 'royal' auroras and a 'Venusian pearl': See the winners of the 2026 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest

A picture of a distant, shark-shaped cloud of gas in space has earned the top prize in a Royal Observatory Greenwich contest for amateur space photographers.Dubbed "The Quiet Predator," the image by skywatcher Ali Alobaidly shows off the Shark Nebula (LDN 1235), which is roughly 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus (the Whale). (For perspective, the nearest star system to our planet is only about 4 light-years away.) The stunning image was chosen as the overall winner of the Royal Observatory Greenwich's 18th ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, whose honorees were announced Thursday (Sept. 17).Alobaidly took the prize-winning image from the Jahra governorate in...

📅 2026-09-17 18:30:00    •    Live Science
See the dazzling images that won Astronomy Photographer of the Year
Science News

See the dazzling images that won Astronomy Photographer of the Year

The Quiet PredatorThe Quiet Predator © Ali Alobaidly (Kuwait) The astonishing diversity of the cosmos is on display in the 2026 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, organised by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. From our own solar system to distant nebulae, these images showcase the many wonders we can observe from the ground on Earth. The overall winner (above), The Quiet Predator, was taken by Ali Alobaidly in Kuwait. It shows a dense nebula 650 light years away, in the constellation Cepheus. This cloud of dust, called the Shark nebula, contains a few bright stars that make their surroundings glow blue. The nebula is so dark and distant that it took Alobaidly more than...

📅 2026-09-17 18:30:00    •    New Scientist
Scientists identify rare genetic mutation that dramatically raises risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers
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Scientists identify rare genetic mutation that dramatically raises risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers

Scientists have identified an inherited genetic mutation that greatly increases the risk of lung cancer, even in people who have never smoked.The mutation involves the EGFR gene, which helps control cells' growth, division and survival. People who had never smoked and who had the genetic mutation — called EGFR T790M — were 62 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers without the mutation, according to the new study, published Thursday (Sept. 17) in the journal Science. By comparison, people who smoked but didn't carry the mutation were four times likelier to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers, so the mutation alone carried a higher risk of the disease.Among people in the stud...

📅 2026-09-17 18:27:36    •    Live Science
Threatened bumblebee populations in England and Wales face severe genetic declines
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Threatened bumblebee populations in England and Wales face severe genetic declines

A new study reveals that an important pollinator is rapidly losing genetic diversity in Britain. Moss carder bumblebees were once widespread across the UK, living in flower-rich meadows, marshes and heathlands, where they pollinated a wide variety of plants. However, the loss of these habitats has caused the species to retreat into strongholds along the country's coasts and islands.

📅 2026-09-17 18:20:21    •    Phys.org
This million-year-old 'baby planet' is the youngest world scientists have ever discovered
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This million-year-old 'baby planet' is the youngest world scientists have ever discovered

A "baby" exoplanet, discovered emerging from its cosmic cocoon around a nearby star, is the youngest alien world ever seen, a new study reveals. The planetary infant is less than 1 million years old and could help researchers study how other planets, including our own, took shape. The juvenile world, dubbed Elias 2-24 b, orbits a newly formed star around 450 light-years from Earth. It is somewhere between two and four times as massive as Jupiter and almost twice as far from its home star as Neptune is from the sun. Astronomers spotted initial signs of the hefty exoplanet in 2017, when they noticed a small gap in the star's protoplanetary disk — the swirling ring of gas, dust and other stella...

📅 2026-09-17 18:10:12    •    Live Science
What your dog really thinks about you
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What your dog really thinks about you

Science is helping to peel back the layers of how dogs process the world around them

📅 2026-09-17 16:15:00    •    Scientific American
'Predatory behavior': Elite mathematicians clash over OpenAI's 'solution' to million-dollar math problem
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'Predatory behavior': Elite mathematicians clash over OpenAI's 'solution' to million-dollar math problem

HEIDELBERG, Germany — Often considered the slowest, most methodical and most abstract of the sciences, mathematics usually advances so incrementally and esoterically that it rarely troubles the mainstream media. It was therefore with some discomfort that a panel of elite mathematicians took to the stage Sept. 15 here at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a conference that unites young researchers with award-winning mathematicians and computer scientists. The focus of the panel: to confront the rapid rise of AI, whose threat to their quiet discipline has thrust them into the limelight.In the past year alone, AI systems have made substantial contributions to the solutions of dozens of problems pos...

📅 2026-09-17 15:25:53    •    Live Science
Scientists name a new cat species for the first time in over a century
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Scientists name a new cat species for the first time in over a century

For the first time in a century, scientists have identified a new cat species, thanks to genetic analysis — and it's resolved a long-standing debate about the cat family tree. The newly identified species, Leopardus tilcayo, is a type of tiger cat ‪—‬ a small, spotted wild cat ‪—‬ that lives in the Yungas cloud forest region of Bolivia. The analysis also revealed a subspecies of another tiger cat species, named Leopardus tigrinus antisuyo, which lives in Peru.Previously thought to be a northern tiger cat (Leopardus tigrinus), L. tilcayo split off from other Leopardus species 1.4 million years ago, the study found. This makes it the first novel living cat species to be discovered in over a ce...

📅 2026-09-17 15:00:00    •    Live Science