Astronomers have released the largest-ever 2D map of our Universe, charting nearly 4 billion stars, galaxies and other objects across roughly 75% of the sky. Created as part of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, the map is publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. It could help scientists hunt for gravitational lenses, supernovae, dark matter and clues to dark energy. This image shows...

Planetary researchers analyzing images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have found evidence that liquid nitrogen may still be seeping up from beneath the dwarf planet’s giant glacier, Sputnik Planitia, marking the first suggested case of recently flowing liquid on Pluto’s surface. This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700...

Archaeologists in southwestern Germany have unearthed two miniature bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory, among the smallest and most delicate examples of Ice Age art ever found. Two bird figurines found at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany. Image credit: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen / Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art. The two ancient figurines, roughly 2 cm (0.8 inches) long and weighing...

For more than a century, paleontologists studying the Late Jurassic seas that once covered southern Germany believed only one species of ichthyosaur, Aegirosaurus leptospondylus, had left its remains in the region’s famous Plattenkalk limestone deposits, the same fine-grained rock that produced the iconic fossil bird Archaeopteryx. Now, Dr. Erin Maxwell from the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde...

Dinosaurs evolved into some of the largest animals ever to walk the Earth, but a new mathematical model suggests that early mammals may have crowded them out of the ecological niches reserved for the smallest creatures. Torvosaurus gurneyi. Image credit: © Sergey Krasovskiy. “Across vertebrates living today, tiny animals are everywhere. Mice, hummingbirds, geckos, and shrews all weigh just a few...

Using the largest sample yet of particles called beauty mesons, physicists with the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) refined a decades-old test of the subtle imbalance that let our Universe exist at all. Neutral beauty mesons can turn into their own antimatter opposite and back again. Image credit: Ansar Iqbal / CMS. One of the greatest mysteries in physics is why the Universe...

In three new studies, researchers at the University of Gothenburg found that adolescents who use nicotine — including e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches — report more mental health symptoms than peers who don’t, with girls showing the strongest effects; they also found that nicotine altered activity in the amygdala, a brain region tied to emotion. Andersson et al. found associations...

Neanderthals vanished roughly 42,000 years ago, but a piece of their biology appears to be quietly at work in some people today, according to a new study led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Aspects of Neanderthal anatomy live on in people today. Image credit: Holger Neumann / Neanderthal Museum. “Neanderthals are the most well-known among archaic human...

Zircon crystals and impact-altered minerals show that a massive asteroid slammed into what is now the Pilbara region of Western Australia about 3 billion years ago. The North Pole Dome crater: (A) simplified map of the East Pilbara Terrane (EPT, Western Australia), showing Paleoarchean granite domes (pink) and greenstone belts (greens and blues); the North Pole Dome (NPD) lies near the terrane center;...

In three new studies, researchers at the University of Gothenburg found that adolescents who use nicotine — including e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches — report more mental health symptoms than peers who don’t, with girls showing the strongest effects; they also found that nicotine altered activity in the amygdala, a brain region tied to emotion. Andersson et al. found associations...