TOI-561b, a rocky exoplanet so close to its parent star that its year lasts just over 10 hours, may be wrapped in a thick, reflective atmosphere, according to a new analysis of data gathered by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. An artist’s rendition of the TOI-561 planetary system. Image credit: Adam Makarenko / W.M. Keck Observatory. TOI-561 is a bright star located 280.5 light-years...

Uranus and Neptune are often described as near-twins, but a new study suggests their chemistry, and possibly their histories, may differ more than expected. The materials making up Neptune and Uranus likely came from different regions in the protoplanetary disk around the young Sun. Image credit: SwRI. “Uranus and Neptune may resemble twins today, but their chemistry is telling us that they are...

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 partial dinosaur skeleton unearthed in a Surrey brickworks in 2001 has been identified as a previously unknown genus and species of an early-diverging hadrosauroid iguanodontian. Life reconstruction of the iguanodontian dinosaur Paludohadros proudlovii; in the distance, the large predatory dinosaur Baryonyx walkeri can be seen. Image credit: Guilherme Gehr. The new species, Paludohadros proudlovii,...

A pale-yellow fungus up to 50 cm (20 inches) tall, growing from the roots of dying trees in China’s Yunnan province, belongs to a lineage that may have originated in the aftermath of the dinosaur extinction. Stromata of Dianjunus rex in the field. Image credit: Song et al., doi: 10.3389/ffunb.2026.1940464. “This remarkable species represents a new fungal family and provides a rare window into...

Physicists at Northwestern University have held a single positron — the antimatter twin of the electron — in a trap for months and manipulated it one quantum jump at a time. They call their setup a ‘one-positron quantum cyclotron.’ Cloud chamber photograph by the American experimental physicist Carl David Anderson of the first positron ever identified. Antimatter is hard to study...

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), the virus that causes cold sores, reshapes microglia in a narrow region of the brainstem, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Anschutz; whether the changes last, or matter for Alzheimer’s risk, is unknown. Micrograph of a herpes simplex virus. Image credit: CDC / Erskine Palmer. HSV-1 infects a large share of the world’s population...

Researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School have produced the most comprehensive portrait to date of the ‘average’ human genome, drawn from the whole-genome sequences of nearly 900,000 adults in two large research biobanks: UK Biobank and the US-based All of Us program. The average human genome contains 4.3-5.3 million variants, of which 1.5% are rare. Image credit: Wright et al.,...

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;...

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), the virus that causes cold sores, reshapes microglia in a narrow region of the brainstem, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Anschutz; whether the changes last, or matter for Alzheimer’s risk, is unknown. Micrograph of a herpes simplex virus. Image credit: CDC / Erskine Palmer. HSV-1 infects a large share of the world’s population...