Astronomers using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope have captured a spectacular image of two little-known nebulae: Gum 10 and Gum 11. This VST image shows Gum 10 and Gum 11, two nebulae in the southern constellation of Puppis. Image credit: ESO / VPHAS+ Team. “What shapes do you see? A chicken pecking seeds on the ground, the head of a dragon, or something else entirely?” ESO astronomers asked in...

The giant planet’s bow shock isn’t just deflecting the solar wind, it’s acting as a powerful particle accelerator, firing electrons to relativistic energies of at least 1 MeV, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. As planets and stars travel through the streams of charged particles flowing across space, their magnetic fields act like obstacles; incoming particles...

Neolithic people, not glaciers, moved the Altar Stone — the six-ton central sandstone megalith at Stonehenge — from northeast Scotland to Salisbury Plain, according to a new study led by archaeologists from Curtin University and Sheffield Hallam University. Stonehenge. Image credit: Sally Wilson. “Our findings suggest the journey was far from simple and likely required careful planning...

Around 66 million years ago, the end-Cretaceous extinction event reshaped Earth’s biodiversity, yet its impact on marine fishes remains debated due to gaps in the fossil record. In new research, paleontologists described an assemblage of marine fish fossils from the 62.2-million-year-old site of Qreiya 3 in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, providing a window into this transition. Among the findings...

Deep in the mountains of northern Taiwan, a towering Taiwania cryptomerioides — a large coniferous tree in the cypress family Cupressaceae whose ancestors date back 100 million years — has been confirmed as the tallest known tree in East Asia. The Heaven Sword tree. Image credit: Chia-Chun Hsu et al., doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1746112. Nicknamed the Heaven Sword, the tree stands 84.1 m tall...

Mathematicians from University College London and the University of California, Davis, have published a mathematical proof that the Universe’s accelerating expansion can be explained without dark energy, dealing a serious blow to the Lambda-cold dark matter model — the standard cosmological model that has stood for nearly 30 years. Alexander et al. provide a mathematical proof that instabilities...

In a small randomized trial in the United Kingdom, adults who added a serving of 100% fruit juice or a smoothie to a healthier diet reported lower depression scores after four weeks. People who drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or a smoothie each day as part of the UK’s 5-a-day healthy eating guidance see improvements in their mental wellbeing. Image credit: Joseph Mucira. “While most people...

Scientists have extracted and analyzed proteins from the tooth enamel of six Homo erectus individuals who lived in China roughly 400,000 years ago, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the genetic makeup of one of humanity’s most successful and far-ranging ancestors. Their results suggest that Homo erectus may have carried genetic variants that were later passed to Denisovans and eventually...

Unusual gases rising from geothermal springs within the Kafue Rift of Zambia suggest a deep fracture in Earth’s crust could mark the early stages of a new tectonic boundary. Location map of the extensional zone within the Central African Plateau of Zambia. The Kafue Rift is connected to the Luano and Luangwa rifts to the NE, and the Western branch of the EARS at the Rukwa rift (RRB) and Rungwe...

By combining seismic, gravity and topographic data, a team of researchers from Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom found that several well-known subglacial basins in East Antarctica are part of a single fan-shaped province whose origins trace back to ancient continental stretching. Fault-controlled basins and interpreted structural frame in the newly-identified East Antarctic Fan-Shaped...