Named ‘hypersoft X-ray sources,’ these objects give off very low-energy X-rays that are difficult to detect. This composite image shows the locations of hypersoft X-ray sources in the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Univ. of Alabama / Muhibullah et al. / ESA / STScI / SAO / N. Wolk. “We’ve never encountered a group of objects that act like this,” said Dr. Mustafa...

Using data collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, planetary scientists have revealed that a geologically puzzling formation in Jezero crater experienced multiple distinct episodes of water-related alteration, deepening its significance as a target in the search for ancient signs of life on Mars. The concentric feature in the East Margin of the Margin unit, Jezero crater, Mars. Image credit: Bedford...

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...

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of therizinosaur based on a nearly complete skeleton found in northeastern China. Named Kayrasaurus changliensis, the species is the largest therizinosaurian dinosaur known from the famed Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota. Life reconstruction of Jehol therizinosaurians, illustrating variation in body size, skeletal proportions and inferred ecological...

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...