Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected water-ice clouds swirling through the atmosphere of Epsilon Indi Ab, a cold super-Jupiter that challenges existing models of giant planet atmospheres. An artist’s impression of Epsilon Indi Ab with water clouds atop its ammonia-dominated atmosphere. Image credit: E.C. Matthews, MPIA / T. Müller, HdA. Epsilon Indi A is...

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected more than 20 carbon-containing compounds — including seven never before seen on Mars — in a sample collected from 3.5-billion-year-old clay-bearing sandstones in Gale Crater. A close-up of three holes Curiosity drilled into Martian rock at a location nicknamed Mary Anning in October 2020. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS. Nicknamed Mary Anning...

Hominins at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel relied on driftwood gathered along a lakeshore to fuel their hearths, according to new research led by archaeologists from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social and Bar-Ilan University; 780,000-year-old charcoal fragments from the site show that survival wasn’t about finding the perfect wood — it...

Paleontologists in Brazil have identified a new genus and species of hyperodapedontine rhynchosaur — an extinct lineage of beaked, herbivorous reptiles — based on a partial skull and lower jaws recovered from Triassic rocks. Named Isodapedon varzealis, the species appears to represent a distinct branch within a group that was once thought to be less diverse. An artistic representation...

New experiments with rice suggest that the acoustic vibrations of falling droplets can jolt dormant seeds into growth, offering the first direct evidence that plants can sense natural sound. Rice and related seed types can sense the sound of rain impacting the soil or water surface above them and respond by accelerating germination at depths where impulsive rain sound is sufficiently intense to intermittently...

A new high-precision calculation of a key component underpinning the magnetic moment of the muon, a heavier cousin of the electron, brings theory and experiment into rare alignment, reinforcing the Standard Model and dimming hopes of new physics. A muon particle passing through lead in a cloud chamber. Image credit: Jino John 1996 / CC BY-SA 4.0. The muon is a subatomic particle similar to an electron...

In a large clinical trial, Tufts University researcher Bess Dawson-Hughes and colleagues found that vitamin D supplements reduced diabetes risk only in people with certain genetic variants, pointing toward a more personalized approach to prevention. Dawson-Hughes et al. found prediabetic adults with certain variations in the vitamin D receptor gene had a 19% lower risk of developing diabetes when...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from eight fossils found in Stajnia Cave in Poland reveals a tight-knit group of Neanderthals who lived about 100,000 years ago, offering one of the clearest genetic snapshots yet of a single community in prehistoric Europe. At least seven Neanderthals lived in Stajnia Cave in what is now Poland around 100,000 years ago. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven. Stajnia Cave is situated...

By tracing magnetic signals preserved in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia, geoscientists have found the oldest direct evidence yet that parts of the planet’s outer shell were shifting across the globe, pushing the origins of plate motion deep into Earth’s early history. Hadean Earth. Image credit: Alec Brenner. “There has been a huge range of ages suggested for timing,” said...

In a large clinical trial, Tufts University researcher Bess Dawson-Hughes and colleagues found that vitamin D supplements reduced diabetes risk only in people with certain genetic variants, pointing toward a more personalized approach to prevention. Dawson-Hughes et al. found prediabetic adults with certain variations in the vitamin D receptor gene had a 19% lower risk of developing diabetes when...