Astronomy

ALMA Detects Heavy Water in Planet-Forming Disk around Distant Protostar

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of heavy water molecules as they have been observed in giant molecular clouds, a planet forming-disk, and comets -- before they eventually may have made their way to Earth. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NSF’s NRAO / P. Vosteen / B. Saxton.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected doubly deuterated water (D2O), or ‘heavy water,’ in the protoplanetary disk around V883 Orionis, a protostar located 1,300 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. This detection reveals that some of the water found in comets — and maybe even Earth — is older than the disk’s star itself,...

Paleontology

Paleontologists Discover New Species of Triassic Long-Necked Dinosaur

Huayracursor jaguensis. Image credit: Jorge Blanco.

Paleontologists have unearthed a new assemblage of Triassic fossils at the Quebrada Santo Domingo site of the Northern Precordillera Basin in northwestern Argentina. Their discoveries include a nearly complete skeleton of a previously unknown sauropodomorph dinosaur species as well as several cynodonts, rhynchosaurs, and aetosaurs. Huayracursor jaguensis. Image credit: Jorge Blanco. The newly-discovered...

Biology

Researchers Revive Pleistocene-Age Microbes

Abundance of Archaea across samples collected from the Permafrost Research Tunnel near Fairbanks, Alaska. Image credit: Caro et al., doi: 10.1029/2025JG008759.

Scientists have resurrected ancient microbes from permafrost cores of Late-Pleistocene age (up to 40,000 years old) collected from four locations within the Permafrost Research Tunnel near Fairbanks, Alaska. They’ve found that the microbes in thawing subsurface permafrost exhibit a slow ‘reawakening’ at first, but within six months the microbial community undergoes dramatic changes. Abundance...

Physics

New Form of Ice Discovered: Ice XXI

A small crystal of ice XXI formed through nucleation and slow melting process. Image credit: Lee et al., doi: 10.1038/s41563-025-02364-x.

Scientists have demonstrated that supercompressed water transforms into ice VI at room temperature through multiple freezing-melting pathways, which occur via a previously unknown form of metastable ice, named ice XXI. A small crystal of ice XXI formed through nucleation and slow melting process. Image credit: Lee et al., doi: 10.1038/s41563-025-02364-x. Water, composed of only two elements, forms...