Astronomers have found new evidence that 3I/ATLAS, only the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected entering the Solar System from beyond, formed in an extremely cold environment far from any star. The distribution of dust (blue), gas (green) and ions (red) in the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Image credit: Lea Ferellec. “This object gives us a rare chance to study material that formed...

The Solar System’s smallest planet has contracted by nearly 19 km (12 miles) across, as crater debris masked telltale wrinkles on its surface, according to new research led by the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Space Research. This color image of Mercury was generated from three MESSENGER images taken through filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths. Image credit: NASA / Johns...

Scientists from Curtin University and the University of York have pinpointed the origin of the Devil’s Arrows, the three towering gritstone megaliths that have stood on the edge of Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, for roughly 4,000 years, ending a long-running archaeological debate. The Devil’s Arrows, the three towering gritstone megaliths on the western outskirts of Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, the United...

El Soplao, a fossil site tucked into the hills of Cantabria in northern Spain, stands out for yielding amber pieces with a blue-violet hue and abundant bioinclusions, according to a new review paper. The larval lacewing Hallucinochrysa diogenesi and its debris-carrying behavior. (a) photograph of the holotype in ventrolateral view; (b) life reconstruction of two late-instar larvae in dorsolateral...

In experiments in Thailand, Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) learned to ignore an enticing but ineffective route to food and quickly adapted when a familiar solution stopped working. Experiment setup: (A) an elephant enters the ‘over’ opening to gain access to food in a familiarization trial; (B) an elephant enters the ‘under’ opening to gain access to food (apple) in a test trial. Image...

When two black holes merge, the resulting object rings like a struck bell, radiating gravitational waves that fade in a distinctive pattern called ringdown. According to general relativity, this pattern should depend only on the merged black hole’s mass and spin. But if a black hole carries extra structure — often called ‘hair’ — from surrounding dark matter, exotic fields, or modified...

In a study of 2,266 workers in Finland, evening-type people, or night owls, were up to three times more likely to be treated for depression or anxiety than morning types, with poor work-life balance identified as a key contributing factor. Merikanto et al. showed that evening-types had more issues regarding work spillover to personal life and poor recovery from work and that these factors moderated...

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;...

Paleoanthropologists have identified a trove of Denisovan fossils from a cave in China’s Yunnan province, extending the known range of the elusive human relative and providing the first-ever direct evidence of what its forearm bones looked like. An artist’s concept of a Penghu Denisovan walking under the bright Sun during the Pleistocene of Taiwan. Image credit: Cheng-Han Sun. “Denisovans are...