The life cycle of molecular gas in the barred spiral galaxy Messier 83 appears to be driven mainly by the galaxy’s large-scale structure and rotation, rather than by feedback from newborn stars, according to a new study. This ALMA image shows the barred spiral galaxy Messier 83. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Koda et al. Messier 83 is located approximately 15 million light-years away...

The Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud is a wisp of water ice that appears downwind of the 20-km- (12.4-mile) tall Arsia Mons volcano — the southernmost in a trio of giant Martian shield volcanoes known collectively as Tharsis Montes — in the Martian southern hemisphere’s spring and summer. This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. Image credit: ESA / DLR /...

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 new species of belemnite — an extinct relative of today’s cuttlefish and squid — has been identified from two bullet-shaped fossils found in Wyoming, the United States. Named Wyoteuthis linsterorum, it belongs to a family that was supposed to have vanished some 20 million years before the animal lived. Wyoteuthis linsterorum. Image credit: Jason Poole. Belemnites swam in Jurassic...

In a new review paper, Dr. Hannes Bonhoff of Lund University and Dr. Heikki Helanterä from the University of Oulu argue that the departing swarm represents the parent colony leaving with its queen, while afterswarms may allow it to produce multiple offspring. They also propose that a honeybee colony is not immortal but a lineage of mortal superorganisms, each with its own distinct life cycle. Western...

In ferromagnets, like a refrigerator magnet, atomic spins line up in the same direction. In antiferromagnets, neighboring spins point in opposite directions and cancel each other out. Now physicists reports experimental evidence for a material that blends features of both: a cobalt-intercalated tantalum diselenide (Co1/4TaSe2) that appears to be an altermagnet. Establishment of altermagnetic crystal...

Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University and Massachusetts General Hospital have found that people who reported eating late at night had a 20 to 30% higher risk of liver disease than those who did not. Reaching for a snack after dinner or before bed may carry a cost beyond extra calories. Image credit: Jill Wellington. “Night shift workers grapple with misalignment of the body’s...

Bats make up more than one fifth of all living mammal species, yet where and when they first took to the air has been debated for decades. An analysis of 103 bat genomes points to the European continent as the birthplace of the only mammals capable of powered flight, overturning earlier theories that favored Africa, Asia or North America. The findings come from the Bat1K consortium, an international...

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;...

Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University and Massachusetts General Hospital have found that people who reported eating late at night had a 20 to 30% higher risk of liver disease than those who did not. Reaching for a snack after dinner or before bed may carry a cost beyond extra calories. Image credit: Jill Wellington. “Night shift workers grapple with misalignment of the body’s...