The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS carries a chemical fingerprint unlike anything in our Solar System, and it may have formed 10 to 12 billion years ago, before our Sun even existed, according to two papers published in the journal Nature. Hubble captured this image of 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 446 million km (277 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / David Jewitt,...

The main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, a heavily cratered fragment born from a catastrophic breakup 155 million years ago, appears to wobble through space while preserving clues to the migration of water-rich worlds in the early Solar System, according to a new analysis of images and data from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. The asteroid Donaldjohanson is composed of two heavily cratered lobes, connected...

Scientists have uncovered compelling new evidence that early human ancestors, likely Homo erectus, were deliberately bringing fire into Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa as far back as 1.79 million years ago. Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. Image credit: Michael Chazan. Wonderwerk Cave is located 60 km south of the town of Kuruman in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. The site has yielded a fossil...

A new genus and species of four-winged pennaraptoran dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern China is adding another twist to the story of how birds evolved from their dinosaur ancestors, according Dr. Xing Xu, a paleontologist with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Changzhousaurus sinensis. Image credit: Connor Ashbridge / CC...

New research spanning five continents and vastly different cultures — from the steppes of Mongolia to the rainforests of the Pacific — shows that hunting dogs and their owners cooperate, communicate and rely on each other in nearly identical ways, suggesting the relationship was forged in deep evolutionary time, perhaps 30,000 years ago. Testing situation and hunters with their dogs —...

Physicists with LHCb Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have detected the elusive Ωcc⁺ baryon, a particle containing two charm quarks and one strange quark, completing a long-sought family of doubly charmed baryons first predicted over half a century ago. An artist’s impression of the doubly charmed Ωcc⁺ baryon. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez / CERN. “Quarks are basic...

Copper diacetyl bis(4-methyl-3-thiosemicarbazone), or Cu(ATSM), restored a key waste-removal system in the brain, reducing toxic amyloid-beta buildup and improving spatial memory in lab models of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a team of researchers at Monash University. Using the APP/PS1 mouse model of familial Alzheimer’s disease, Pyun et al. investigated the effect of Cu(ATSM) on brain microvascular...

The extinct Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea) and today’s African and Asian lions (Panthera leo) belong to separate evolutionary lineages that diverged roughly 1.7 million years ago — far earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of 12 cave lion genomes spanning more than 100,000 years. Cave lions painted in the Chauvet Cave, France. Lions are among the most abundant and...

Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593 have uncovered evidence of an asteroid impact that occurred 3.5 billion years ago on the Moon, helping to reconstruct a period of intense bombardment that left lasting marks across the inner Solar System. XRF map of 7.53 g slice of NWA 12593: calcium (Ca) and iron (Fe) illustrate the location and diversity of clasts;...

New research spanning five continents and vastly different cultures — from the steppes of Mongolia to the rainforests of the Pacific — shows that hunting dogs and their owners cooperate, communicate and rely on each other in nearly identical ways, suggesting the relationship was forged in deep evolutionary time, perhaps 30,000 years ago. Testing situation and hunters with their dogs —...