A barred spiral galaxy called NGC 4698 has a bizarre structure in which its central stars and gas rotate perpendicular to the galaxy’s main disk, possibly because it acquired material from outside. This Hubble image shows NGC 4698, a barred spiral galaxy some 55 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Thilker, MAUVE-HST Team. NGC 4698 is located...

Using images from the LROC instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists have discovered the biggest newly formed impact crater ever discovered in the Solar System. The crater, now named McGetchin, appeared on the Moon’s eastern edge in 2024. This close-up view of McGetchin crater was taken on December 5, 2025, by the Narrow-Angle Camera (NAC) onboard NASA’s Lunar...

Roughly 18,000 years ago, in what is now northern Ukraine, artists carved small female figurines from mammoth ivory and covered them with zigzags and meanders. New research suggests those designs were not purely invented, they appear to echo the natural patterns inside the tusk. Mizyn figurines. Image credit: Radchenko et al., doi: 10.1038/s40494-026-02988-5. “The study of Upper Paleolithic figurines...

A new analysis of Tyrannosaurus rex teeth indicates the ancient predator maintained a body temperature of about 36.3 degrees Celsius (97.3 degrees Fahrenheit), close to that of Indian and African elephants and far warmer than its cold-blooded reptile neighbors. Tyrannosaurus rex holotype specimen at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, the United States. Image credit: Scott Robert...

Entomologists have described two previously unrecognized species of Anchiale — a genus of large, winged stick insects — from tropical Queensland, and restored a third to full species status. Anchiale mabiensis, paratype male. Image credit: Ross M. Coupland. “The genus Anchiale currently comprises a total of 16 species living across most of the tropical Australasian regions, with the...

Physicists from the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have found evidence of the Higgs boson decaying into a ‘virtual’ photon and a real photon, which in turn produces a pair of leptons. This pathway, known as H→γ*γ→llγ, occurs in just one in about 10,000 Higgs decays, making it one of the particle’s most elusive behaviors. Event display of a candidate Higgs...

Scientists have long treated the brain as a single organ that grows from one pool of early cells. Stanford University neuroscientist Kyle Loh and colleagues challenge this view, arguing that the human brain is two distinct nervous systems that evolved separately and were joined together over hundreds of millions of years. The discovery could also help explain why researchers have struggled for decades...

For several decades, paleontologists have described Miracinonyx trumani — an extinct species of cheetah-like felid that roamed the North American prairies and steppe terrains more than 13,000 years ago — as North America’s answer to the African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). New research led by the University of California, Santa Cruz suggests the picture was largely wrong. Miracinonyx...

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;...

Scientists have long treated the brain as a single organ that grows from one pool of early cells. Stanford University neuroscientist Kyle Loh and colleagues challenge this view, arguing that the human brain is two distinct nervous systems that evolved separately and were joined together over hundreds of millions of years. The discovery could also help explain why researchers have struggled for decades...