Astrophysicists at the University of Copenhagen show that the enigmatic ‘little red dots’ — red sources scattered across images of the early Universe — are rapidly growing black holes wrapped in ionized gas, offering new insight into how supermassive black holes formed after the Big Bang. Little red dots are young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons. Image credit: NASA...

In new experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS), microbiologists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Rhodium Scientific Inc. have discovered that the near-weightless environment of space can significantly reshape how bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — interact with their hosts. The International Space Station is seen with Earth in the background....

At Leang Bulu Bettue, a rock-shelter in the Maros-Pangkep karst region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, paleoanthropologists have uncovered one of the most complete records of early human occupation ever found in Wallacea — a key crossroads between Asia and Australia. Their discovery sheds new light on how early Homo sapiens lived, adapted and possibly encountered archaic hominin species...

A comprehensive analysis of 17 fossil specimens reveals that Tyrannosaurus rex grew far more slowly than previously thought — reaching its full-grown size of eight tons around age 40 — and challenges earlier assumptions about its life history. Tyrannosaurus rex holotype specimen at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, the United States. Image credit: Scott Robert Anselmo...

A fish species called the armored rockhead poacher (Bothragonus swanii) carries a secret that has confounded marine biologists for decades: a deep, bowl-shaped hole in the middle of its skull. This bizarre anatomical feature has now been linked to an extraordinary form of communication. The rockhead poacher (Bothragonus swanii) in Oregon Coast Aquarium. Image credit: Rhinopias / CC BY-SA 4.0. First...

Physicists from the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity at the University of Bremen and the Transylvanian University of Brașov have unveiled a new theoretical framework that could rewrite how we understand the accelerating expansion of the Universe — and potentially render the mysterious dark energy obsolete. They’ve proposed that the acceleration may be a fundamental feature...

Compared to other primates, humans have remarkably large brains relative to their body sizes. The resultant high demands for glucose may have been supported by changes in the gut microbiota, which can influence host metabolism. In this study, we tested this idea by inoculating germ-free mice with gut microbes from three primate species varying in brain size. Brain gene expression differences between...

The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is a cold-adapted herbivore that went extinct around 14,000 years ago, but little is known about their population decline prior to extinction. In new research, scientists from the Centre for Palaeogenetics and Stockholm University generated a high-coverage genome from one of the last known woolly rhinoceros remains, which was recovered from the stomach...

Researchers have found ancient gases and fluids trapped in 1.4-billion-year-old halite crystals from northern Ontario, Canada. Their analyses directly constrain Mesoproterozoic (1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago) oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations to 3.7% modern levels and 10 times preindustrial levels, respectively. The results show this was a period of equable climate and that atmospheric oxygen...

A newly-described partial skeleton from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya is giving paleoanthropologists their most complete picture yet of Homo habilis — one of the earliest members of the human genus — revealing just how physically distinct it was from later Homo species. Facial reconstruction of Homo habilis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes. Cataloged as KNM-ER 64061, the partial...