diff --git "a/raw_rss_feeds/https___www_livescience_com_feeds_all.xml" "b/raw_rss_feeds/https___www_livescience_com_feeds_all.xml" --- "a/raw_rss_feeds/https___www_livescience_com_feeds_all.xml" +++ "b/raw_rss_feeds/https___www_livescience_com_feeds_all.xml" @@ -1,917 +1,1547 @@ - - <![CDATA[ Latest from Live Science ]]> - https://www.livescience.com - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 17:05:00 +0000 + + <![CDATA[ Latest from Live Science ]]> + https://www.livescience.com/feeds.xml + + Sat, 19 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000 en - <![CDATA[ Anglo-Saxon children discovered buried with warrior gear in UK — perhaps as a nod to 'the men these children might have become' ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/anglo-saxon-children-discovered-buried-with-warrior-gear-in-uk-perhaps-as-a-nod-to-the-men-these-children-might-have-become + <![CDATA[ Scientists build a DNA computer that can perform calculations in a drop of water ]]> + Scientists have built a DNA-powered computer that can perform calculations using billions of molecules in a tiny drop of water.

The system taps into the laws of physics to create what the scientists describe as a computing system that's more efficient than the conventional computers that are widely used today.

Rather than continuously using energy to force a calculation through a series of processing steps, the DNA computer is designed so that its more "energetically favorable" state is the correct answer. In other words, the computer is built to use less energy than other biological computers, which integrate living cells with traditional hardware, would take to calculate the answer.

"The clever part is that the binding process is competitive: the DNA molecules compete with each other to select a winner, which succeeds in binding to the scaffold; all of the jostling and competition process information and execute a computation," Damien Woods, a professor of computer science at Maynooth University in Ireland and a co-author of the study, told Live Science in an email. "Eventually, the system settles down into its energetically-preferred state which encodes the answer to the computation."

The researchers described their system, called the Scaffolded DNA Computer (SDC), in a study published Sept. 16 in the journal Nature. They tested the SDC on 10 programs, including 100-bit computations. Some calculations, like 10 + 3, took around 30 seconds for the SDC to compute.

There are several possible long-term applications for the SDC, but these are currently speculative, the researchers noted in the study.

DNA-based systems could potentially contribute to molecular data storage, energy-efficient forms of computation, or even devices capable of running inside living cells.

"Molecular computers like this are not trying to replace electronic ones, but they could be used in biological environments, smart materials and archival DNA data storage," Abeer Eshra, an assistant professor of computer science and a co-author of the study, told Live Science via email. "Our work is a new direction for DNA data storage, since any data stored in such a system would have natural built-in error correction properties."

A computer made from DNA

The SDC is made from short strands of DNA that interact with a longer DNA scaffold. The strands are placed into a small amount of salt water, and then heated and cooled.

As the DNA strands interact, they assemble into structures according to a set of programmed rules that make up the "computation." The DNA strands act like tiny molecular puzzle pieces, with their sequences determining which pieces can attach to one another and to different positions on the longer scaffold. By designing these binding rules, the researchers effectively "program" a calculation.

"Each program corresponds to a set of DNA strands: to program a different computation, or give a different input, we simply select different DNA strands from the fridge," Woods and Eshra told Live Science in an email.

The approach also exploits thermodynamics — the tendency of physical systems to move toward more energetically favorable states. When the mixture is heated and cooled, the strands compete to form the most stable arrangements, with the correct configuration becoming energetically favored. The final structure encodes the answer, allowing the molecules to "compute" by simply interacting with each other.

DNA molecules interact to "compute" specific calculations. (Image credit: Design Cells via Getty Images)

While the DNA computer itself is tiny, the number of strands involved in the computing process is enormous.

"A small droplet of liquid contains billions, and sometimes trillions, of DNA strands," Eshra said in a statement. "These strands interact with one another to produce a result."

A reusable molecular computer

Using the SDC, the researchers demonstrated more than 700 computations across their experiments. Their programs included addition; multiplication by 3; division by 2; and eight-bit parity detection, a common type of error correction for computing. Small calculations could be completed in under a minute, which is striking given that the computing has to go through chemical reactions that take the same amount of time or longer.

"They're trivial calculations you could easily do faster yourself, and a silicon computer would finish in an instant," Constantine Evans, a senior research fellow at Maynooth University and a co-author of the study, told Live Science. "Our system uses just a handful of molecules, never really following an organized process of steps, never making irreversible steps, and yet ending up with the right answer. When thinking about computation at a molecular level, reliably making even those seemingly simple computations is very hard."

Larger calculations took considerably longer. A more difficult sum in the range of about 11 million to 34 million took up to 14 hours.

"It demonstrates that the system is programmable, reusable and although slow compared to silicon, it is fast compared to other DNA computers," Woods and Eshra wrote in a joint email to Live Science.

In addition to being fast, the SDC is reusable. Whereas many earlier molecular computers were intended as one-time experiments, the SDC was designed so the molecules could be used repeatedly.

"Many molecular computers to date relied on specially prepared components, or molecular fuels to drive the system forward, or carefully timed reactions," Eshra said. "Our DNA computer instead works by throwing the molecules together and letting it relax towards equilibrium."

Related Stories

Three of the programs were successfully redone up to 24 times. The team even repeated one experiment 1.5 years after the original experiment. The SDC had partially dried out, but the researchers were able to rerun the calculations by adding water.

For now, however, the work is mainly a demonstration that thermodynamics can be used to perform useful calculations.

"There is still a lot more theory to do!" Eshra said. Broader future directions include "designing scaffolds that are better suited to computation, improving the system's read-out, and investigating potential applications in DNA data storage. We are already working on some of these questions."

Can you match these ancient devices to their pictures? Find out with our computing quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/scientists-build-a-dna-computer-that-can-perform-calculations-in-a-drop-of-water - + - XRaFvsvUphQY5Cw8NcSTD9 - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 17:05:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 23:16:27 +0000 - - - - - + zxg47KvmpFJfm2YUPCcMzU + + Sat, 19 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Scientists have built a DNA-powered computer that can perform calculations using billions of molecules in a tiny drop of water.

The system taps into the laws of physics to create what the scientists describe as a computing system that's more efficient than the conventional computers that are widely used today.

Rather than continuously using energy to force a calculation through a series of processing steps, the DNA computer is designed so that its more "energetically favorable" state is the correct answer. In other words, the computer is built to use less energy than other biological computers, which integrate living cells with traditional hardware, would take to calculate the answer.

"The clever part is that the binding process is competitive: the DNA molecules compete with each other to select a winner, which succeeds in binding to the scaffold; all of the jostling and competition process information and execute a computation," Damien Woods, a professor of computer science at Maynooth University in Ireland and a co-author of the study, told Live Science in an email. "Eventually, the system settles down into its energetically-preferred state which encodes the answer to the computation."

The researchers described their system, called the Scaffolded DNA Computer (SDC), in a study published Sept. 16 in the journal Nature. They tested the SDC on 10 programs, including 100-bit computations. Some calculations, like 10 + 3, took around 30 seconds for the SDC to compute.

There are several possible long-term applications for the SDC, but these are currently speculative, the researchers noted in the study.

DNA-based systems could potentially contribute to molecular data storage, energy-efficient forms of computation, or even devices capable of running inside living cells.

"Molecular computers like this are not trying to replace electronic ones, but they could be used in biological environments, smart materials and archival DNA data storage," Abeer Eshra, an assistant professor of computer science and a co-author of the study, told Live Science via email. "Our work is a new direction for DNA data storage, since any data stored in such a system would have natural built-in error correction properties."

A computer made from DNA

The SDC is made from short strands of DNA that interact with a longer DNA scaffold. The strands are placed into a small amount of salt water, and then heated and cooled.

As the DNA strands interact, they assemble into structures according to a set of programmed rules that make up the "computation." The DNA strands act like tiny molecular puzzle pieces, with their sequences determining which pieces can attach to one another and to different positions on the longer scaffold. By designing these binding rules, the researchers effectively "program" a calculation.

"Each program corresponds to a set of DNA strands: to program a different computation, or give a different input, we simply select different DNA strands from the fridge," Woods and Eshra told Live Science in an email.

The approach also exploits thermodynamics — the tendency of physical systems to move toward more energetically favorable states. When the mixture is heated and cooled, the strands compete to form the most stable arrangements, with the correct configuration becoming energetically favored. The final structure encodes the answer, allowing the molecules to "compute" by simply interacting with each other.

DNA molecules interact to "compute" specific calculations. (Image credit: Design Cells via Getty Images)

While the DNA computer itself is tiny, the number of strands involved in the computing process is enormous.

"A small droplet of liquid contains billions, and sometimes trillions, of DNA strands," Eshra said in a statement. "These strands interact with one another to produce a result."

A reusable molecular computer

Using the SDC, the researchers demonstrated more than 700 computations across their experiments. Their programs included addition; multiplication by 3; division by 2; and eight-bit parity detection, a common type of error correction for computing. Small calculations could be completed in under a minute, which is striking given that the computing has to go through chemical reactions that take the same amount of time or longer.

"They're trivial calculations you could easily do faster yourself, and a silicon computer would finish in an instant," Constantine Evans, a senior research fellow at Maynooth University and a co-author of the study, told Live Science. "Our system uses just a handful of molecules, never really following an organized process of steps, never making irreversible steps, and yet ending up with the right answer. When thinking about computation at a molecular level, reliably making even those seemingly simple computations is very hard."

Larger calculations took considerably longer. A more difficult sum in the range of about 11 million to 34 million took up to 14 hours.

"It demonstrates that the system is programmable, reusable and although slow compared to silicon, it is fast compared to other DNA computers," Woods and Eshra wrote in a joint email to Live Science.

In addition to being fast, the SDC is reusable. Whereas many earlier molecular computers were intended as one-time experiments, the SDC was designed so the molecules could be used repeatedly.

"Many molecular computers to date relied on specially prepared components, or molecular fuels to drive the system forward, or carefully timed reactions," Eshra said. "Our DNA computer instead works by throwing the molecules together and letting it relax towards equilibrium."

Related Stories

Three of the programs were successfully redone up to 24 times. The team even repeated one experiment 1.5 years after the original experiment. The SDC had partially dried out, but the researchers were able to rerun the calculations by adding water.

For now, however, the work is mainly a demonstration that thermodynamics can be used to perform useful calculations.

"There is still a lot more theory to do!" Eshra said. Broader future directions include "designing scaffolds that are better suited to computation, improving the system's read-out, and investigating potential applications in DNA data storage. We are already working on some of these questions."

Can you match these ancient devices to their pictures? Find out with our computing quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'A second set of eyes': AI-supported breast cancer screening spots more cancers earlier, landmark trial finds ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/cancer/a-second-set-of-eyes-ai-supported-breast-cancer-screening-spots-more-cancers-earlier-landmark-trial-finds + <![CDATA[ An 'impossible' black hole merger may finally be solved thanks to Einstein's relativity — but it raises an even bigger mystery ]]> + Astronomers suspect that a never-before-seen variation of a space-time phenomenon could explain an "impossible" black hole merger that has puzzled experts for years. But if their theory is true, it creates an entirely new mystery to solve.

On Nov. 23, 2023, both halves of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — located in Washington and Louisiana — detected an unusual set of gravitational waves. These ripples in the fabric of space-time can be triggered by some of the universe's most powerful events, such as exploding stars and rapidly spinning neutron stars. But in this case, the signal, dubbed GW231123, originated from a pair of colliding black holes around 2 billion light-years from Earth.

The merger also made waves in the media as the most massive black hole collision to date, with the two parent black holes birthing a singularity around 230 times more massive than the sun. The only problem is that the colliding black holes ‪—‬ which weighed 100 and 130 solar masses, respectively ‪—‬ are too large to be explained by our current understanding of the universe.

The pair dwell in what astronomers call a "mass gap," meaning they are too large to be stellar-mass black holes, created by collapsing stars, but they are smaller than intermediate-mass black holes, which we still do not fully understand. Adding to the strangeness, the black holes were spinning much faster than expected when they smashed into each other.

Researchers have put forward several potential explanations for the black holes' "forbidden" sizes. One study released last year proposed a new pathway by which singularities of this size could form: via the collapse of larger stars that would otherwise explode as supernovas. However, this idea goes against a lot of previous observational evidence.

Now, in a study published Aug. 25 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers propose a simpler, yet equally intriguing explanation for GW231123. They suggest that the signal from the merger was warped by a strange space-time phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which occurs when distant emissions pass through patches of distorted space-time bent by the gravity of massive foreground objects.

Looped video footage showing gravitational waves rippling away from a pair of colliding black holes

When black holes collide, they send out ripples in the fabric of space-time, dubbed gravitational waves, which can be detected by special observatories on Earth, such as LIGO. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

This effect has been shown to magnify, or otherwise warp, distant light sources many times before. However, until now, researchers had found no evidence that gravitational lensing could happen to ripples in space-time.

"Like light, gravitational waves can also be deflected, magnified and split into multiple signals by massive objects," study co-author Miguel Zumalacárregui, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany, said in a statement. "For gravitational waves, diffraction and interference effects give us an additional way to identify and study lensed signals."

Cosmic magnification

The idea of gravitational lensing was first proposed in 1915 by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which states that the gravity of massive objects, such as galaxies or black holes, warps the space-time surrounding them. If such an object is positioned directly between Earth and another more distant object, then the light from the far-off entity can pass through the distorted space-time, effectively bending around the middle object. As a result, the light can be magnified, diffracted or otherwise altered — just as it might by passing through a glass lens.

This effect can create stunning spectacles, including halos of light known as Einstein rings, unusual cross-shaped structures, and multiple copies of a single light source. By studying these luminous curiosities, researchers can weigh the lensing objects, thus revealing hidden discrepancies caused by invisible dark matter and providing one of our best methods for studying this elusive substance.

In the new study, the researchers modeled how gravitational waves might be altered by a lensing object. They found that the GW231123 signal could have been magnified, which would have greatly exaggerated the masses of the black holes involved.

A collage of telescope photos of Einstein rings

The gravitational lensing of visible light can sometimes create luminous halos, dubbed Einstein rings. In these images, the lensing object is the bright spot at the center of the rings and the warped blue light is from a distant object, located directly behind the "lens." (The blue light has also been magnified, making it appear much brighter than it otherwise would.) (Image credit: NASA)

"If we assume that GW231123 was deflected and distorted by a compact object of about 190 to 850 solar masses — or by an extended structure such as a globular cluster — we can understand the observed high masses," study first author Srashti Goyal, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, said in the statement. "Moreover, the lensing interpretation does not require unusually high spins."

Taking this into account, the total mass of the newly merged black hole would be around 140 solar masses rather than the 230 solar masses researchers initially measured, meaning the colliding black holes that formed it no longer dwell in the problematic mass gap. It also suggests that the black hole may be even farther from Earth than astronomers thought.

However, while the lensing of gravitational waves is theoretically possible, it has never been seen before. The new study is also purely theoretical ‪—‬ the researchers have no direct evidence of lensing, such as an accompanying Einstein ring ‪—‬ so more work is needed to show this may be what happened here, the researchers noted.

A new mystery

The new theory could finally put the mystery of GW231123 to bed. But in doing so, it raises another intriguing question: What lensed the puzzling signal?

In most cases of gravitationally lensed light, the lensing object is something enormous, like a galaxy, which can be trillions of times more massive than the sun. But the researchers' models suggest that any potential lensing object here must be much smaller, and they have not been able to spot anything that fits the bill in between Earth and the origin point of GW231123.

RELATED STORIES

"The nature of the lens remains a major mystery in our analysis, as individual compact lenses with 100 – 1,000 solar masses should be exceedingly rare," Zumalacárregui said. "Future work will need to establish whether such lenses can form, or whether an ensemble of lighter objects, including stars, can explain this event.

If the team can figure out what may have magnified the signal and prove that the space-time ripples have been warped, it could be transformational for future astronomy. If gravitational waves can be lensed, it opens up the possibility of studying ancient black hole mergers or similar cosmic events that would otherwise be too far away for us to detect. The researchers also think that analyzing the diffraction patterns of such signals could provide more clues to the elusive identity of dark matter.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/an-impossible-black-hole-merger-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-einsteins-relativity-but-it-raises-an-even-bigger-mystery - + - scrdrHRtVmBZM3FQaGLTVn - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:47:46 +0000 - - - - - - - + UrTMyxwyZpcZR66ftkBBoV + + Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + + + + + +

Astronomers suspect that a never-before-seen variation of a space-time phenomenon could explain an "impossible" black hole merger that has puzzled experts for years. But if their theory is true, it creates an entirely new mystery to solve.

On Nov. 23, 2023, both halves of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — located in Washington and Louisiana — detected an unusual set of gravitational waves. These ripples in the fabric of space-time can be triggered by some of the universe's most powerful events, such as exploding stars and rapidly spinning neutron stars. But in this case, the signal, dubbed GW231123, originated from a pair of colliding black holes around 2 billion light-years from Earth.

The merger also made waves in the media as the most massive black hole collision to date, with the two parent black holes birthing a singularity around 230 times more massive than the sun. The only problem is that the colliding black holes ‪—‬ which weighed 100 and 130 solar masses, respectively ‪—‬ are too large to be explained by our current understanding of the universe.

The pair dwell in what astronomers call a "mass gap," meaning they are too large to be stellar-mass black holes, created by collapsing stars, but they are smaller than intermediate-mass black holes, which we still do not fully understand. Adding to the strangeness, the black holes were spinning much faster than expected when they smashed into each other.

Researchers have put forward several potential explanations for the black holes' "forbidden" sizes. One study released last year proposed a new pathway by which singularities of this size could form: via the collapse of larger stars that would otherwise explode as supernovas. However, this idea goes against a lot of previous observational evidence.

Now, in a study published Aug. 25 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers propose a simpler, yet equally intriguing explanation for GW231123. They suggest that the signal from the merger was warped by a strange space-time phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which occurs when distant emissions pass through patches of distorted space-time bent by the gravity of massive foreground objects.

Looped video footage showing gravitational waves rippling away from a pair of colliding black holes

When black holes collide, they send out ripples in the fabric of space-time, dubbed gravitational waves, which can be detected by special observatories on Earth, such as LIGO. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

This effect has been shown to magnify, or otherwise warp, distant light sources many times before. However, until now, researchers had found no evidence that gravitational lensing could happen to ripples in space-time.

"Like light, gravitational waves can also be deflected, magnified and split into multiple signals by massive objects," study co-author Miguel Zumalacárregui, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany, said in a statement. "For gravitational waves, diffraction and interference effects give us an additional way to identify and study lensed signals."

Cosmic magnification

The idea of gravitational lensing was first proposed in 1915 by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which states that the gravity of massive objects, such as galaxies or black holes, warps the space-time surrounding them. If such an object is positioned directly between Earth and another more distant object, then the light from the far-off entity can pass through the distorted space-time, effectively bending around the middle object. As a result, the light can be magnified, diffracted or otherwise altered — just as it might by passing through a glass lens.

This effect can create stunning spectacles, including halos of light known as Einstein rings, unusual cross-shaped structures, and multiple copies of a single light source. By studying these luminous curiosities, researchers can weigh the lensing objects, thus revealing hidden discrepancies caused by invisible dark matter and providing one of our best methods for studying this elusive substance.

In the new study, the researchers modeled how gravitational waves might be altered by a lensing object. They found that the GW231123 signal could have been magnified, which would have greatly exaggerated the masses of the black holes involved.

A collage of telescope photos of Einstein rings

The gravitational lensing of visible light can sometimes create luminous halos, dubbed Einstein rings. In these images, the lensing object is the bright spot at the center of the rings and the warped blue light is from a distant object, located directly behind the "lens." (The blue light has also been magnified, making it appear much brighter than it otherwise would.) (Image credit: NASA)

"If we assume that GW231123 was deflected and distorted by a compact object of about 190 to 850 solar masses — or by an extended structure such as a globular cluster — we can understand the observed high masses," study first author Srashti Goyal, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, said in the statement. "Moreover, the lensing interpretation does not require unusually high spins."

Taking this into account, the total mass of the newly merged black hole would be around 140 solar masses rather than the 230 solar masses researchers initially measured, meaning the colliding black holes that formed it no longer dwell in the problematic mass gap. It also suggests that the black hole may be even farther from Earth than astronomers thought.

However, while the lensing of gravitational waves is theoretically possible, it has never been seen before. The new study is also purely theoretical ‪—‬ the researchers have no direct evidence of lensing, such as an accompanying Einstein ring ‪—‬ so more work is needed to show this may be what happened here, the researchers noted.

A new mystery

The new theory could finally put the mystery of GW231123 to bed. But in doing so, it raises another intriguing question: What lensed the puzzling signal?

In most cases of gravitationally lensed light, the lensing object is something enormous, like a galaxy, which can be trillions of times more massive than the sun. But the researchers' models suggest that any potential lensing object here must be much smaller, and they have not been able to spot anything that fits the bill in between Earth and the origin point of GW231123.

RELATED STORIES

"The nature of the lens remains a major mystery in our analysis, as individual compact lenses with 100 – 1,000 solar masses should be exceedingly rare," Zumalacárregui said. "Future work will need to establish whether such lenses can form, or whether an ensemble of lighter objects, including stars, can explain this event.

If the team can figure out what may have magnified the signal and prove that the space-time ripples have been warped, it could be transformational for future astronomy. If gravitational waves can be lensed, it opens up the possibility of studying ancient black hole mergers or similar cosmic events that would otherwise be too far away for us to detect. The researchers also think that analyzing the diffraction patterns of such signals could provide more clues to the elusive identity of dark matter.

+ + ]]> + + + + <![CDATA[ Why does blond hair tend to darken with age? ]]> + If your blond preteen seems to be turning into a brunette, you're not imagining things. For some children, hair that starts out platinum blond gradually becomes darker and may end up dark brown, or even black, as they grow.

So what causes this change?

The short answer is that hair color is controlled by a complex interplay of genes, pigment-producing cells and, later in childhood, hormones. Scientists understand many of the genes involved in hair color, but they are still trying to find out why some blond children's hair darkens while others' locks remain blond for life.

"It depends on their genetic inheritance," Desmond Tobin, a professor of dermatological science at University College Dublin, told Live Science in an email.

Hair gets its color from a pigment called melanin, which is produced by specialized cells called melanocytes in hair follicles. There are two main types of melanin: eumelanin, which produces brown and black shades, and pheomelanin, which contributes yellow and red tones to hair. The amount and type of melanin produced by a follicle largely determine the color of the hair that grows from it.

Sign up for our newsletter

The words 'Life Little Mysteries' over a blue background

Sign up for our weekly Life's Little Mysteries newsletter to get the latest mysteries before they appear online.

In general, more eumelanin means darker hair. For example, during pregnancy, high levels of estrogen and progesterone can encourage hair darkening as more eumelanin is produced.

The activity of hair follicles isn't necessarily fixed throughout childhood. As children grow, the biological signals controlling pigment production can change, too.

From blond to brown

For many blond children, the most noticeable darkening happens around puberty, typically between about 10 and 13 years old, Tobin said.

It is likely the hormonal changes during puberty, such as estrogens and androgens that stimulate an increased production of eumelanin, that gradually turn blond hair darker over time, he said. "Those that remain blond typically have a genetically determined reduction in eumelanin pigment formation," Tobin added.

Exactly how hormones might cause this change, however, is still something of a mystery.

The most noticeable hair darkening seems to happen around puberty. (Image credit: Halfpoint Images via Getty Images)

One clue comes from a group of hormones called melanocortins. One of these, alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH), is involved in telling pigment-producing cells to make more melanin. In our skin, alpha-MSH is triggered by ultraviolet (UV) light. UV light can damage DNA in skin cells that, via a cellular signaling pathway, encourages the release of alpha-MSH to make the skin tan.

But in hair, things get, well, hairy. Scientists haven't shown that a rise in alpha-MSH, testosterone, estrogen or any particular hormone is what makes blond hair darken.

The melanocortin system shows that hormones can tell pigment-producing cells to make more eumelanin. What remains unclear is whether changes in this system are actually responsible for blond hair darkening during puberty.

"We haven't yet identified the genes that control this process," Wojciech Branicki, a researcher who studies the genetics of human pigmentation at Jagiellonian University in Poland, told Live Science in an email.

Related mysteries

One possibility Branicki suggested is that hormones may affect children's hair follicles differently depending on their genetic background. For now, researchers don't know which genes are involved or how they interact with hormonal changes during puberty, as more research is needed.

Branicki posits that in some children, the hormones could induce the production of melanin or the transport of pigment within the hair follicle. In other words, two children could start out with similarly blond hair but respond differently to the hormonal changes as their bodies develop. One might continue producing relatively little eumelanin and stay blond, while the other's follicles might gradually ramp up pigment production, causing new batches of hair to grow darker.

"Research on human genome variation is quite advanced, but not all aspects have been explained yet," Branicki said.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/why-does-blond-hair-tend-to-darken-with-age + + + + WxnnTAXeVsofnr7wpxhnAL + + Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

If your blond preteen seems to be turning into a brunette, you're not imagining things. For some children, hair that starts out platinum blond gradually becomes darker and may end up dark brown, or even black, as they grow.

So what causes this change?

The short answer is that hair color is controlled by a complex interplay of genes, pigment-producing cells and, later in childhood, hormones. Scientists understand many of the genes involved in hair color, but they are still trying to find out why some blond children's hair darkens while others' locks remain blond for life.

"It depends on their genetic inheritance," Desmond Tobin, a professor of dermatological science at University College Dublin, told Live Science in an email.

Hair gets its color from a pigment called melanin, which is produced by specialized cells called melanocytes in hair follicles. There are two main types of melanin: eumelanin, which produces brown and black shades, and pheomelanin, which contributes yellow and red tones to hair. The amount and type of melanin produced by a follicle largely determine the color of the hair that grows from it.

Sign up for our newsletter

The words 'Life Little Mysteries' over a blue background

Sign up for our weekly Life's Little Mysteries newsletter to get the latest mysteries before they appear online.

In general, more eumelanin means darker hair. For example, during pregnancy, high levels of estrogen and progesterone can encourage hair darkening as more eumelanin is produced.

The activity of hair follicles isn't necessarily fixed throughout childhood. As children grow, the biological signals controlling pigment production can change, too.

From blond to brown

For many blond children, the most noticeable darkening happens around puberty, typically between about 10 and 13 years old, Tobin said.

It is likely the hormonal changes during puberty, such as estrogens and androgens that stimulate an increased production of eumelanin, that gradually turn blond hair darker over time, he said. "Those that remain blond typically have a genetically determined reduction in eumelanin pigment formation," Tobin added.

Exactly how hormones might cause this change, however, is still something of a mystery.

The most noticeable hair darkening seems to happen around puberty. (Image credit: Halfpoint Images via Getty Images)

One clue comes from a group of hormones called melanocortins. One of these, alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH), is involved in telling pigment-producing cells to make more melanin. In our skin, alpha-MSH is triggered by ultraviolet (UV) light. UV light can damage DNA in skin cells that, via a cellular signaling pathway, encourages the release of alpha-MSH to make the skin tan.

But in hair, things get, well, hairy. Scientists haven't shown that a rise in alpha-MSH, testosterone, estrogen or any particular hormone is what makes blond hair darken.

The melanocortin system shows that hormones can tell pigment-producing cells to make more eumelanin. What remains unclear is whether changes in this system are actually responsible for blond hair darkening during puberty.

"We haven't yet identified the genes that control this process," Wojciech Branicki, a researcher who studies the genetics of human pigmentation at Jagiellonian University in Poland, told Live Science in an email.

Related mysteries

One possibility Branicki suggested is that hormones may affect children's hair follicles differently depending on their genetic background. For now, researchers don't know which genes are involved or how they interact with hormonal changes during puberty, as more research is needed.

Branicki posits that in some children, the hormones could induce the production of melanin or the transport of pigment within the hair follicle. In other words, two children could start out with similarly blond hair but respond differently to the hormonal changes as their bodies develop. One might continue producing relatively little eumelanin and stay blond, while the other's follicles might gradually ramp up pigment production, causing new batches of hair to grow darker.

"Research on human genome variation is quite advanced, but not all aspects have been explained yet," Branicki said.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'There's no reason to ban us from playing': Analysis debunks notion that transgender women have inherent physical advantages in sports ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/theres-no-reason-to-ban-us-from-playing-analysis-debunks-notion-that-transgender-women-have-inherent-physical-advantages-in-sports + <![CDATA[ 'Of course I am worried': Live Science readers react to US weapons in space ]]> + The idea of weapons in space, once a plot of science fiction, became a reality Monday (Sept. 14), when U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland that the United States had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."

Experts are worried that with this new announcement, outer space may become the next frontier for an arms race. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, dictated that no weapons should be placed in orbit. But the treaty had no enforcement mechanism, meaning the U.S.' announcement may not result in any international sanctions, which could instead encourage other countries to add their own weapons to the final frontier, experts suggested.

With the U.S.' recent deployment of these technologies, Live Science ran a poll to see how readers felt about the possible threat of weapons in space. The results reveal just how worrying this topic is.

More than 280 readers voted in the poll, with 80% choosing the option "Yes, I'm worried that space will become the next frontier for weapons."

The comments reflect this general trend. "Of course I am worried that the US have put weapons in space," one reader wrote, adding that they're worried by anything the administration in Washington is currently doing.

Related stories

Other readers echoed this sentiment, with one commenter saying, "Peace in space depends on the calibre and wisdom of world leaders which currently is simply not up to the necessary standard to be unlegislated."

The next-largest voting group, 14% of readers, picked this option: "This is a bit premature, and I'm waiting to see how other countries will react."

One comment opined that the presence of weapons in space doesn't necessarily mean they are intended to set off a major conflict, with one reader writing, "I think the observation 'if you want peace, prepare for war' is most relevant here. There is no suggestion these weapons were put there to start a war, but if one eventuates one day we will be glad defensive measures are already in place."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/of-course-i-am-worried-live-science-readers-react-to-us-weapons-in-space - + - 2AvFG8UkMxXZt5maV5Bsvj - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:00:00 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:38:50 +0000 - - - - - + R6KsCvyW44yDKhvh2wZkUW + + Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:46:02 +0000 + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The idea of weapons in space, once a plot of science fiction, became a reality Monday (Sept. 14), when U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland that the United States had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."

Experts are worried that with this new announcement, outer space may become the next frontier for an arms race. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, dictated that no weapons should be placed in orbit. But the treaty had no enforcement mechanism, meaning the U.S.' announcement may not result in any international sanctions, which could instead encourage other countries to add their own weapons to the final frontier, experts suggested.

With the U.S.' recent deployment of these technologies, Live Science ran a poll to see how readers felt about the possible threat of weapons in space. The results reveal just how worrying this topic is.

More than 280 readers voted in the poll, with 80% choosing the option "Yes, I'm worried that space will become the next frontier for weapons."

The comments reflect this general trend. "Of course I am worried that the US have put weapons in space," one reader wrote, adding that they're worried by anything the administration in Washington is currently doing.

Related stories

Other readers echoed this sentiment, with one commenter saying, "Peace in space depends on the calibre and wisdom of world leaders which currently is simply not up to the necessary standard to be unlegislated."

The next-largest voting group, 14% of readers, picked this option: "This is a bit premature, and I'm waiting to see how other countries will react."

One comment opined that the presence of weapons in space doesn't necessarily mean they are intended to set off a major conflict, with one reader writing, "I think the observation 'if you want peace, prepare for war' is most relevant here. There is no suggestion these weapons were put there to start a war, but if one eventuates one day we will be glad defensive measures are already in place."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Clean energy is surging — with or without Trump ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/renewable-energy/clean-energy-is-surging-with-or-without-trump + <![CDATA[ Climate change will harm our health. Here's what could protect us. ]]> +
Burning up

As the planet warms, our environment will be transformed, but so will our bodies. In this series, 'Burning up,' we investigate the health impacts of climate change, focusing on heat, air quality, food and infection risk. In this installment, we evaluate the promising solutions that could help us adapt to our warmer future

In the summer of 2008, New York City lowered the threshold for activating its emergency heat plan.

The city had historically relied on the National Weather Service threshold of a heat index of 105 F (40.6 C), but they noticed that people were getting heat stroke at lower temperatures.

As part of a wider effort, they changed the alert threshold: it would trigger if the temperature reached 100 F (37.8 C) for a day, or 95 F (35 C) for two days in a row. When the threshold was reached, city officials conducted targeted outreach, including to vulnerable groups, like homeless people; alerted residents on their phones; launched measures to protect the power and water supply; and opened cooling centers.

Lowering this threshold correlated with a more than 50% reduction in hospitalizations for heat stroke and related illnesses on hot days.

New York's case study offers one of the clearest examples of an intervention that worked to protect people from deadly heat.

The strongest evidence is where these approaches reduce illness, hospital visits or death, not just heat exposure, pollution levels or other intermediate markers.

Charles Leonard, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania

As the planet warms, we will need to find more of these solutions. The consensus among scientists is that the most effective way to avoid the worst health outcomes of climate change is to slow warming by reducing carbon emissions. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), for instance, would mean 11,600 fewer deaths due to wildfire smoke exposure in the U.S. annually, compared with warming of 5.4 F (3 C).

But even if we rapidly reduce emissions, climate change will have wide-ranging effects on our health

So what measures actually work to protect people's health? Live Science reviewed dozens of studies and talked with 19 climate and health experts at universities and health and climate associations, to identify the most promising solutions to two of the biggest climate-related threats: extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

Some interventions have demonstrated a reduction in deaths or disease at the population level, while others have used modeling to predict health impacts or rely on proxy measures.

"The strongest evidence is where these approaches reduce illness, hospital visits or death," said Charles Leonard, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told Live Science, "not just heat exposure, pollution levels or other intermediate markers."

Most solutions do not offer the level of clarity of the New York example, however. Many reduce temperatures or alter human physiology in ways that are likely to decrease the number of heat-related deaths or cases of illness. But a deeper examination reveals limited evidence that many seemingly intuitive interventions, such as cooling centers, are effective on a societal level.

For both heat and wildfire smoke exposure, we analyzed the evidence to see which interventions have actually worked.

Extreme heat

Air conditioning and heat pumps

Evidence grade: Strong

One of the most common interventions for managing indoor temperatures is the use of mechanical systems with refrigerants, such as air conditioning or heat pumps.

Air conditioning has been tied to reduced hospital admissions in California and reduced heat-related deaths at Texas prisons. During a heat wave in Portugal, patients admitted to an AC-supported hospital had a 40% lower risk of dying than those in wards without AC. It is a clear way to impact health outcomes.

But AC can't be the whole solution.

"One of the most important lessons emerging from heat adaptation research is that no single intervention is sufficient on its own," said Shweta Arya, senior project manager for smart surfaces at the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health and Equity, which leads the association's work on health and climate action.

While 90% of U.S. households used AC in 2020, the latest year for which energy survey data is available, it's not a cure-all. It is vulnerable to power outages, and it contributes to outdoor warming via added electricity demand and heat expelled from vents.

Additionally, just because people have AC doesn't mean they can afford to use it. This is known as the "heat or eat" dilemma: analysis of US household data have consistently shown families limit food purchases and take on debt to pay AC-linked energy bills.

"In many cases, the primary barrier to stay[ing] cool indoors is not access to cooling equipment but the ability to pay monthly energy bills," Pilar Botana Martinez, a research scientist at Boston University's Department of Environmental Health, told Live Science.

Shade, rest and hydration outdoors

Evidence grade: Strong

Staying indoors to avoid the heat is one way to reduce the health impacts of climate change, "but this is not a practical solution for everyone, especially those doing demanding jobs in very hot warehouses, on construction sites, in agricultural fields," Barrak Alahmad, director of the Occupational Health and Climate Change Program at Harvard University, told Live Science.

Nearly one-third of U.S. employees — mostly men — have regular outdoor exposure as part of their job.

Some of the strongest evidence for strategies for keeping them safe on the job comes from studies of sugarcane workers in Central America, Alahmad said. A nongovernmental organization called La Isla Network has rolled out a strategy in which workplaces incorporate mandated rest, shade, hydration and sanitation breaks.

In data collected over six years, La Isla Network has shown that this strategy improves health by reducing negative outcomes such as heat-related kidney failure. Similar reductions in heat-related illnesses have been seen in California; Texas; and Guangzhou, China, when such measures have been implemented. And although these interventions have some training and supply costs, they increase productivity, the data shows, which makes them an easier sell for companies.

"The aim is to build systems that reduce risk and harm, increase productivity and provide a return on investment so that these efforts just become business as usual," Jason Glaser, CEO of La Isla Network, told Live Science.

Workers in white shirts work to shade themselves from the sun.
Tom Laffay for La Isla Network
Workers in white shirts work to shade themselves from the sun.
Tom Laffay for La Isla Network

Passive cooling

Evidence grade: Intermediate

Passive cooling reduces indoor temperatures without mechanical devices like AC. These strategies include modern technologies, such as reflective surfaces and roofs that reflect more sunlight and thus keep buildings cooler; shade structures and urban greenery; and traditional techniques, like courtyards, shades and ventilation.

"These are often low-cost material choices that can make a big difference in the safety and comfort inside a building and have a proven track record of performance [in lowering temperature]," said Kurt Shickman, senior fellow at the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.

These passive technologies also make AC more efficient, thus reducing costs and lowering demand for electricity on peak power days, Shickman said.

A worker whitewashes a roof in New York City. White reflects more heat than dark colors do, so white roofs can keep buildings cooler. (Image credit: Bill Tompkins via Getty Images)

The evidence suggests cool roofs work at scale. A 2019 California modeling study predicted that state-wide adoption of this technology would halve the number of people exposed to heat wave conditions by 2050, while a 2024 study in London that modeled cool-roof deployment predicted that the technology could reduce heat-related deaths by up to 32% during heat waves.

Green spaces can also reduce heat exposure. In dense cities in Southeast Asia, the introduction of green infrastructure, such as trees lining streets and additional bodies of water, has been shown to reduce air temperatures by up to 4.7 F (2.6 C) and surface temperatures by 19.8 F (11 C).

Those interventions won't work everywhere, though, in part because strategies that reduce deaths from heat could worsen those from cold, and cold-related deaths are four times more common globally, a 2025 study found. So places that have both cold snaps and heat waves will need to think about those trade-offs before implementing such strategies.

A map of vegetation (left) and temperature (right) in New York City. Areas with more greenery can be significantly cooler. (Image credit: Maps by Robert Simmon, using data from the Landsat Program. )

City-wide heat warning systems

Evidence grade: Strong

Heat warning systems have been proposed to reduce heat exposure. There is evidence that some existing systems, such as New York City's, work to reduce death or hospitalization. But whether these systems are effective depends on how they're implemented.

Effective systems do far more than issue a temperature alert.

Shweta Arya, senior project manager for smart surfaces at the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health and Equity

"Effective systems do far more than issue a temperature alert" based on forecast high-heat events, Arya told Live Science ‪—‬ an idea other experts echoed. Instead, they trigger coordinated actions, such as reaching out to vulnerable populations, extending utility protections, and coordinating with healthcare systems for surges in the number of patients.

It's difficult to test such plans in controlled experiments, but researchers try by comparing a city before and after an intervention, or by finding comparable cities or regions that did or didn't implement a heat plan and assessing the plan's effectiveness. These "natural experiments" offer a comparison without having an alternative universe as a control group. Academics using such methods concluded in 2025 that heat exposure prevention plans led to a 25% reduction in deaths attributable to extreme heat across Europe.

Personalized alerts

Evidence grade: Strong

While most warning systems trigger when temperatures cross a threshold that's considered dangerous for an average person, Shickman said, "[i]n reality, people experiencing the same air temperature will have very different responses to it."

Arrows pointing up

One solution could be to individualize attention. Shickman pointed to a pilot program by insurance company Emblem Health in New York, in which a trained artificial intelligence (AI) agent supported 17,000 people with personalized advice targeted to those with complex health or social issues. The intervention halved hospital admissions compared with a control group that didn't take part.

"We can go a step further and use technology to shift from generic, passive warnings to proactive ones that address individuals' needs," he explained.

Personalized alerts can help, but they need to paired with other interventions to be effective, data suggest. (Image credit: Anadolu via Getty Images)

Cooling centers

Evidence grade: Weak

A common strategy implemented during heat waves is the use of cooling centers — dedicated public spaces like libraries, schools, religious buildings or commercial locations where cooler air (often via air conditioning) offers respite.

Arrows pointing up

Despite extensive adoption across the U.S. and internationally, there is very limited evidence that cooling centers reduce deaths or hospitalizations from heat exposure — likely because they're not visited much.

For example, a 2024 study into Virginia's cooling centers questioned the state's existing strategy because communities that had cooling centers also had higher numbers of heat-related illnesses. Surveying the field, a 2025 review from the National Bureau of Economic Research questioned "whether those who can most benefit from reduced heat exposure can or are willing to access cooling centers, and whether travel to centers can actually increase heat exposure relative to staying at home."

Wildfire smoke

Wildfire smoke is full of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. These particles are 30 times smaller than the diameter of an average human hair and can penetrate deep into the lungs and the bloodstream, thereby increasing the risk of ailments such as heart attacks, asthma attacks and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

PM2.5 pollution contributes to tens of thousands of excess deaths every year in the U.S. And research suggests that wildfire smoke emissions could increase by 262% to 482% by 2055, depending on the level of carbon emissions.

Here's what has been shown to work against this threat.

Commercial air filtration

Evidence grade: Intermediate

Data repeatedly shows that air filtration — whether through commercial HVAC systems or even a fan with a filter taped to it — reduces indoor PM2.5 exposure.

arrows pointing up

"For wildfire smoke, an important adaptation is cleaner indoor air, as simple as that may sound," Leonard said.

Staying indoors protects individuals from the worst PM2.5 exposure. But a 2021 California study that used 1,400 air quality sensors showed that on days with nearby wildfires, smoke found its way into households, tripling PM2.5 compared with days without fires.

Putting newer-grade filters (MERV 16 or higher) on commercial systems, however, can reduce PM2.5 indoors by 81%, studies found. Similarly, portable air filters have been shown to reduce PM2.5 exposure in Montana offices, Seattle homes and Singapore apartments.

However, what's still unclear is the extent to which air filtration will reduce deaths or hospitalizations related to wildfire smoke. This is because we don't know whether interventions that make air cleaner in perfect conditions scale up; people may not replace their air filters, or they may use the portable ones only some of the time, for example.

Modeling of some air filtration measures, however, suggests that they could prevent 11% to 63% of the hospital admissions and 7% to 39% of wildfire-linked deaths.

Masks for outdoor smoke exposure

Evidence grade: Intermediate

Many people, including those who work in construction and other outdoor jobs, must venture outside during smoky days, and they need information and tools to protect themselves, said Gillian Capper, program manager at the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health and Equity.

arrows pointing up

For example, these measures include "distributing N95 respirators and requiring smoke protection plans for outdoor workers," she said.

Modeling studies show that N95 respirators can reduce exposure to wildfire smoke by 90%, and a modeling exercise that used data from 2012 wildfires in Washington state showed that these masks decrease smoke-linked hospitalizations by up to 30%, compared with a group that did not use masks.

N95 masks are recommended for people who need to venture outside on smoky days. (Image credit: Anadolu via Getty Images)

Land management

Evidence grade: Intermediate

The evidence to support a reduction in wildfires through land management is mixed. The idea is that by thinning forests, harvesting trees, clearing underbrush and doing prescribed burns to prevent unplanned conflagrations, we can reduce the risk of massive, uncontrolled wildfires.

arrows pointing up

"Reducing fuels today may help avoid larger, more severe fires and associated smoke impacts in the future," Micah Hahn, an associate professor of environmental health at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told Live Science. "But relatively little research has directly measured those downstream health benefits."

A 2022 modeling exercise led by U.S. Forest Service scientists compared four forest management scenarios ‪—‬ including actions such as forest thinning and prescribed burning — in the Lake Tahoe basin over the next century. It found that these measures reduced PM2.5 particle levels as well as smoke-related illness and death, compared with fire suppression on its own. It also modeled the health impacts for one year (2039) and found reduced health costs tied to such management.

But the benefits plateaued with more land burns. Research from the southeastern U.S. shows that management can become a large source of PM2.5.

Still, prescribed burns have an advantage over a spontaneously erupting wildfire, experts said. "With prescribed burning, one distinct difference is the ability to plan for smoke," Heidi Huber-Stearns, director of the Center for Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice at the University of Oregon, told Live Science, and to "know when and where it will likely affect communities as compared to the unpredictability of wildfires."

Smoke alerts

In theory, fire alerts, which use high-resolution air-quality data, could reduce smoke exposure, Laura Kate Bender, vice president of nationwide advocacy and public policy at the American Lung Association, told Live Science. Alerts would be paired with tailored guidance to notify people of dangerous smoke levels and to tell them when to take action.

Arrows pointing up

Because these alerts are a fairly new idea, however, there's little data showing that such programs would reduce smoke exposure or related hospitalizations and deaths. That said, there’s evidence from other fields: a 2012 World Bank modeling exercise calculated that weather data and early warnings saved nearly 800 lives per year in Europe, and could save a further 23,000 in the Global South if systems were upgraded.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

"The hurricane warnings are good examples to follow, as people do act on these early warnings", Kai Chen, faculty director at the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, told Live Science.

Ultimately, the researchers we spoke with agreed that we need more data, which requires funding for further studies into which interventions are effective and can be scaled.

"We've put a lot of effort into understanding the impacts of climate change and related exposures," Alahmad said. "But there comes a point where we need to move from studying the impacts to looking at interventions and solutions and see what actually works out there."

How we evaluated studies

We categorized evidence as strong, intermediate, or weak. Here's the criteria we used to assess them.

Strong: Data shows a reduction in disease, hospitalization or death at a population level. Data comes from either randomized trials or quasi-experimental protocols. Sample sizes are robust enough to show a clinically meaningful effect.

Intermediate: Data shows an improvement in an intermediate proxy measure, such as temperature or particulate matter concentrations, which has been tied to negative health outcomes, and/or data relies on modeling to show improved health outcomes at the population-level.

Weak: Limited data exists, or the data that does exist does not show a strong protective effect.

Burning up — How can we adapt to a warming world?

A collage of people dealing with extreme heat over a white background

Climate change will triple the number of days over 105 F in the US. The health impacts will be dire.

Extreme heat will become more common as the climate continues to warm. That will affect almost every facet of our health.

A collage of several images of people wearing masks with wildfire raging below them.

'Wildfire smoke is the fastest-growing environmental threat in the US': How a warming world will poison the air we breathe

Wildfires are projected to increase dramatically due to climate change. That could trigger a massive increase in heart attacks, premature births and early deaths, research reveals.

A collage of farming and people holding food.

'The apple you eat isn't the apple your granddaughter will eat': What's on the menu in a warming world?

Almost every aspect of our food system will be transformed by climate change.

A collage of images of ticks and mosquitos, hospitals and patients

Infectious diseases will seed new ground as the planet warms — here's where they'll spread

Climate change will increase our exposure to myriad infections, from tick-borne diseases to drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/climate-change-will-harm-our-health-heres-what-could-protect-us - + - GZhCFP68tV6LEMWdB8e9xK - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 12:15:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:08:38 +0000 - + oopng7esyhSUzGvAAyAFKN + + Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:35:43 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:31:08 +0000 + - - - - - + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +
Burning up

As the planet warms, our environment will be transformed, but so will our bodies. In this series, 'Burning up,' we investigate the health impacts of climate change, focusing on heat, air quality, food and infection risk. In this installment, we evaluate the promising solutions that could help us adapt to our warmer future

In the summer of 2008, New York City lowered the threshold for activating its emergency heat plan.

The city had historically relied on the National Weather Service threshold of a heat index of 105 F (40.6 C), but they noticed that people were getting heat stroke at lower temperatures.

As part of a wider effort, they changed the alert threshold: it would trigger if the temperature reached 100 F (37.8 C) for a day, or 95 F (35 C) for two days in a row. When the threshold was reached, city officials conducted targeted outreach, including to vulnerable groups, like homeless people; alerted residents on their phones; launched measures to protect the power and water supply; and opened cooling centers.

Lowering this threshold correlated with a more than 50% reduction in hospitalizations for heat stroke and related illnesses on hot days.

New York's case study offers one of the clearest examples of an intervention that worked to protect people from deadly heat.

The strongest evidence is where these approaches reduce illness, hospital visits or death, not just heat exposure, pollution levels or other intermediate markers.

Charles Leonard, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania

As the planet warms, we will need to find more of these solutions. The consensus among scientists is that the most effective way to avoid the worst health outcomes of climate change is to slow warming by reducing carbon emissions. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), for instance, would mean 11,600 fewer deaths due to wildfire smoke exposure in the U.S. annually, compared with warming of 5.4 F (3 C).

But even if we rapidly reduce emissions, climate change will have wide-ranging effects on our health

So what measures actually work to protect people's health? Live Science reviewed dozens of studies and talked with 19 climate and health experts at universities and health and climate associations, to identify the most promising solutions to two of the biggest climate-related threats: extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

Some interventions have demonstrated a reduction in deaths or disease at the population level, while others have used modeling to predict health impacts or rely on proxy measures.

"The strongest evidence is where these approaches reduce illness, hospital visits or death," said Charles Leonard, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told Live Science, "not just heat exposure, pollution levels or other intermediate markers."

Most solutions do not offer the level of clarity of the New York example, however. Many reduce temperatures or alter human physiology in ways that are likely to decrease the number of heat-related deaths or cases of illness. But a deeper examination reveals limited evidence that many seemingly intuitive interventions, such as cooling centers, are effective on a societal level.

For both heat and wildfire smoke exposure, we analyzed the evidence to see which interventions have actually worked.

Extreme heat

Air conditioning and heat pumps

Evidence grade: Strong

One of the most common interventions for managing indoor temperatures is the use of mechanical systems with refrigerants, such as air conditioning or heat pumps.

Air conditioning has been tied to reduced hospital admissions in California and reduced heat-related deaths at Texas prisons. During a heat wave in Portugal, patients admitted to an AC-supported hospital had a 40% lower risk of dying than those in wards without AC. It is a clear way to impact health outcomes.

But AC can't be the whole solution.

"One of the most important lessons emerging from heat adaptation research is that no single intervention is sufficient on its own," said Shweta Arya, senior project manager for smart surfaces at the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health and Equity, which leads the association's work on health and climate action.

While 90% of U.S. households used AC in 2020, the latest year for which energy survey data is available, it's not a cure-all. It is vulnerable to power outages, and it contributes to outdoor warming via added electricity demand and heat expelled from vents.

Additionally, just because people have AC doesn't mean they can afford to use it. This is known as the "heat or eat" dilemma: analysis of US household data have consistently shown families limit food purchases and take on debt to pay AC-linked energy bills.

"In many cases, the primary barrier to stay[ing] cool indoors is not access to cooling equipment but the ability to pay monthly energy bills," Pilar Botana Martinez, a research scientist at Boston University's Department of Environmental Health, told Live Science.

Shade, rest and hydration outdoors

Evidence grade: Strong

Staying indoors to avoid the heat is one way to reduce the health impacts of climate change, "but this is not a practical solution for everyone, especially those doing demanding jobs in very hot warehouses, on construction sites, in agricultural fields," Barrak Alahmad, director of the Occupational Health and Climate Change Program at Harvard University, told Live Science.

Nearly one-third of U.S. employees — mostly men — have regular outdoor exposure as part of their job.

Some of the strongest evidence for strategies for keeping them safe on the job comes from studies of sugarcane workers in Central America, Alahmad said. A nongovernmental organization called La Isla Network has rolled out a strategy in which workplaces incorporate mandated rest, shade, hydration and sanitation breaks.

In data collected over six years, La Isla Network has shown that this strategy improves health by reducing negative outcomes such as heat-related kidney failure. Similar reductions in heat-related illnesses have been seen in California; Texas; and Guangzhou, China, when such measures have been implemented. And although these interventions have some training and supply costs, they increase productivity, the data shows, which makes them an easier sell for companies.

"The aim is to build systems that reduce risk and harm, increase productivity and provide a return on investment so that these efforts just become business as usual," Jason Glaser, CEO of La Isla Network, told Live Science.

Workers in white shirts work to shade themselves from the sun.
Tom Laffay for La Isla Network
Workers in white shirts work to shade themselves from the sun.
Tom Laffay for La Isla Network

Passive cooling

Evidence grade: Intermediate

Passive cooling reduces indoor temperatures without mechanical devices like AC. These strategies include modern technologies, such as reflective surfaces and roofs that reflect more sunlight and thus keep buildings cooler; shade structures and urban greenery; and traditional techniques, like courtyards, shades and ventilation.

"These are often low-cost material choices that can make a big difference in the safety and comfort inside a building and have a proven track record of performance [in lowering temperature]," said Kurt Shickman, senior fellow at the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.

These passive technologies also make AC more efficient, thus reducing costs and lowering demand for electricity on peak power days, Shickman said.

A worker whitewashes a roof in New York City. White reflects more heat than dark colors do, so white roofs can keep buildings cooler. (Image credit: Bill Tompkins via Getty Images)

The evidence suggests cool roofs work at scale. A 2019 California modeling study predicted that state-wide adoption of this technology would halve the number of people exposed to heat wave conditions by 2050, while a 2024 study in London that modeled cool-roof deployment predicted that the technology could reduce heat-related deaths by up to 32% during heat waves.

Green spaces can also reduce heat exposure. In dense cities in Southeast Asia, the introduction of green infrastructure, such as trees lining streets and additional bodies of water, has been shown to reduce air temperatures by up to 4.7 F (2.6 C) and surface temperatures by 19.8 F (11 C).

Those interventions won't work everywhere, though, in part because strategies that reduce deaths from heat could worsen those from cold, and cold-related deaths are four times more common globally, a 2025 study found. So places that have both cold snaps and heat waves will need to think about those trade-offs before implementing such strategies.

A map of vegetation (left) and temperature (right) in New York City. Areas with more greenery can be significantly cooler. (Image credit: Maps by Robert Simmon, using data from the Landsat Program. )

City-wide heat warning systems

Evidence grade: Strong

Heat warning systems have been proposed to reduce heat exposure. There is evidence that some existing systems, such as New York City's, work to reduce death or hospitalization. But whether these systems are effective depends on how they're implemented.

Effective systems do far more than issue a temperature alert.

Shweta Arya, senior project manager for smart surfaces at the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health and Equity

"Effective systems do far more than issue a temperature alert" based on forecast high-heat events, Arya told Live Science ‪—‬ an idea other experts echoed. Instead, they trigger coordinated actions, such as reaching out to vulnerable populations, extending utility protections, and coordinating with healthcare systems for surges in the number of patients.

It's difficult to test such plans in controlled experiments, but researchers try by comparing a city before and after an intervention, or by finding comparable cities or regions that did or didn't implement a heat plan and assessing the plan's effectiveness. These "natural experiments" offer a comparison without having an alternative universe as a control group. Academics using such methods concluded in 2025 that heat exposure prevention plans led to a 25% reduction in deaths attributable to extreme heat across Europe.

Personalized alerts

Evidence grade: Strong

While most warning systems trigger when temperatures cross a threshold that's considered dangerous for an average person, Shickman said, "[i]n reality, people experiencing the same air temperature will have very different responses to it."

Arrows pointing up

One solution could be to individualize attention. Shickman pointed to a pilot program by insurance company Emblem Health in New York, in which a trained artificial intelligence (AI) agent supported 17,000 people with personalized advice targeted to those with complex health or social issues. The intervention halved hospital admissions compared with a control group that didn't take part.

"We can go a step further and use technology to shift from generic, passive warnings to proactive ones that address individuals' needs," he explained.

Personalized alerts can help, but they need to paired with other interventions to be effective, data suggest. (Image credit: Anadolu via Getty Images)

Cooling centers

Evidence grade: Weak

A common strategy implemented during heat waves is the use of cooling centers — dedicated public spaces like libraries, schools, religious buildings or commercial locations where cooler air (often via air conditioning) offers respite.

Arrows pointing up

Despite extensive adoption across the U.S. and internationally, there is very limited evidence that cooling centers reduce deaths or hospitalizations from heat exposure — likely because they're not visited much.

For example, a 2024 study into Virginia's cooling centers questioned the state's existing strategy because communities that had cooling centers also had higher numbers of heat-related illnesses. Surveying the field, a 2025 review from the National Bureau of Economic Research questioned "whether those who can most benefit from reduced heat exposure can or are willing to access cooling centers, and whether travel to centers can actually increase heat exposure relative to staying at home."

Wildfire smoke

Wildfire smoke is full of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. These particles are 30 times smaller than the diameter of an average human hair and can penetrate deep into the lungs and the bloodstream, thereby increasing the risk of ailments such as heart attacks, asthma attacks and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

PM2.5 pollution contributes to tens of thousands of excess deaths every year in the U.S. And research suggests that wildfire smoke emissions could increase by 262% to 482% by 2055, depending on the level of carbon emissions.

Here's what has been shown to work against this threat.

Commercial air filtration

Evidence grade: Intermediate

Data repeatedly shows that air filtration — whether through commercial HVAC systems or even a fan with a filter taped to it — reduces indoor PM2.5 exposure.

arrows pointing up

"For wildfire smoke, an important adaptation is cleaner indoor air, as simple as that may sound," Leonard said.

Staying indoors protects individuals from the worst PM2.5 exposure. But a 2021 California study that used 1,400 air quality sensors showed that on days with nearby wildfires, smoke found its way into households, tripling PM2.5 compared with days without fires.

Putting newer-grade filters (MERV 16 or higher) on commercial systems, however, can reduce PM2.5 indoors by 81%, studies found. Similarly, portable air filters have been shown to reduce PM2.5 exposure in Montana offices, Seattle homes and Singapore apartments.

However, what's still unclear is the extent to which air filtration will reduce deaths or hospitalizations related to wildfire smoke. This is because we don't know whether interventions that make air cleaner in perfect conditions scale up; people may not replace their air filters, or they may use the portable ones only some of the time, for example.

Modeling of some air filtration measures, however, suggests that they could prevent 11% to 63% of the hospital admissions and 7% to 39% of wildfire-linked deaths.

Masks for outdoor smoke exposure

Evidence grade: Intermediate

Many people, including those who work in construction and other outdoor jobs, must venture outside during smoky days, and they need information and tools to protect themselves, said Gillian Capper, program manager at the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health and Equity.

arrows pointing up

For example, these measures include "distributing N95 respirators and requiring smoke protection plans for outdoor workers," she said.

Modeling studies show that N95 respirators can reduce exposure to wildfire smoke by 90%, and a modeling exercise that used data from 2012 wildfires in Washington state showed that these masks decrease smoke-linked hospitalizations by up to 30%, compared with a group that did not use masks.

N95 masks are recommended for people who need to venture outside on smoky days. (Image credit: Anadolu via Getty Images)

Land management

Evidence grade: Intermediate

The evidence to support a reduction in wildfires through land management is mixed. The idea is that by thinning forests, harvesting trees, clearing underbrush and doing prescribed burns to prevent unplanned conflagrations, we can reduce the risk of massive, uncontrolled wildfires.

arrows pointing up

"Reducing fuels today may help avoid larger, more severe fires and associated smoke impacts in the future," Micah Hahn, an associate professor of environmental health at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told Live Science. "But relatively little research has directly measured those downstream health benefits."

A 2022 modeling exercise led by U.S. Forest Service scientists compared four forest management scenarios ‪—‬ including actions such as forest thinning and prescribed burning — in the Lake Tahoe basin over the next century. It found that these measures reduced PM2.5 particle levels as well as smoke-related illness and death, compared with fire suppression on its own. It also modeled the health impacts for one year (2039) and found reduced health costs tied to such management.

But the benefits plateaued with more land burns. Research from the southeastern U.S. shows that management can become a large source of PM2.5.

Still, prescribed burns have an advantage over a spontaneously erupting wildfire, experts said. "With prescribed burning, one distinct difference is the ability to plan for smoke," Heidi Huber-Stearns, director of the Center for Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice at the University of Oregon, told Live Science, and to "know when and where it will likely affect communities as compared to the unpredictability of wildfires."

Smoke alerts

In theory, fire alerts, which use high-resolution air-quality data, could reduce smoke exposure, Laura Kate Bender, vice president of nationwide advocacy and public policy at the American Lung Association, told Live Science. Alerts would be paired with tailored guidance to notify people of dangerous smoke levels and to tell them when to take action.

Arrows pointing up

Because these alerts are a fairly new idea, however, there's little data showing that such programs would reduce smoke exposure or related hospitalizations and deaths. That said, there’s evidence from other fields: a 2012 World Bank modeling exercise calculated that weather data and early warnings saved nearly 800 lives per year in Europe, and could save a further 23,000 in the Global South if systems were upgraded.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

"The hurricane warnings are good examples to follow, as people do act on these early warnings", Kai Chen, faculty director at the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, told Live Science.

Ultimately, the researchers we spoke with agreed that we need more data, which requires funding for further studies into which interventions are effective and can be scaled.

"We've put a lot of effort into understanding the impacts of climate change and related exposures," Alahmad said. "But there comes a point where we need to move from studying the impacts to looking at interventions and solutions and see what actually works out there."

How we evaluated studies

We categorized evidence as strong, intermediate, or weak. Here's the criteria we used to assess them.

Strong: Data shows a reduction in disease, hospitalization or death at a population level. Data comes from either randomized trials or quasi-experimental protocols. Sample sizes are robust enough to show a clinically meaningful effect.

Intermediate: Data shows an improvement in an intermediate proxy measure, such as temperature or particulate matter concentrations, which has been tied to negative health outcomes, and/or data relies on modeling to show improved health outcomes at the population-level.

Weak: Limited data exists, or the data that does exist does not show a strong protective effect.

Burning up — How can we adapt to a warming world?

A collage of people dealing with extreme heat over a white background

Climate change will triple the number of days over 105 F in the US. The health impacts will be dire.

Extreme heat will become more common as the climate continues to warm. That will affect almost every facet of our health.

A collage of several images of people wearing masks with wildfire raging below them.

'Wildfire smoke is the fastest-growing environmental threat in the US': How a warming world will poison the air we breathe

Wildfires are projected to increase dramatically due to climate change. That could trigger a massive increase in heart attacks, premature births and early deaths, research reveals.

A collage of farming and people holding food.

'The apple you eat isn't the apple your granddaughter will eat': What's on the menu in a warming world?

Almost every aspect of our food system will be transformed by climate change.

A collage of images of ticks and mosquitos, hospitals and patients

Infectious diseases will seed new ground as the planet warms — here's where they'll spread

Climate change will increase our exposure to myriad infections, from tick-borne diseases to drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Top 5 tips for buying an electric toothbrush for kids, according to experts ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/top-5-tips-for-buying-an-electric-toothbrush-for-kids-according-to-experts + <![CDATA[ AI agents resorted to crime and self-destruction to survive in a simulated world — but does this mean they would do the same in the real world? ]]> + Artificial intelligence (AI) agents resorted to nefarious behavior, including crime sprees, in a virtual world as part of a recent study into how common large language models (LLMs) interact with each other and share resources to achieve their goals. These models were inclined to commit crimes because they were given ample time to evolve distinct personality traits and behaviors, the researchers behind the project say.

Most programs that test the behavior of AI agents operate in tightly controlled environments over short periods. But "Emergence World," a product of AI company Emergence, is a simulation platform that exposes LLMs to far wider datasets — like the internet as a whole — and assessors track behavior over weeks or months instead of the standard test protocols that usually run for only days or hours.

The discrete tasks, clean environments and shorter run times of traditional AI agent testing are more like exams than rigorous real-world observations, representatives from Emergence said in a blog post. By contrast, they said, Emergence World allows multiple AI agents to interact, learn and evolve over comparatively longer timescales in over 40 distinct virtual environments. They're also exposed to real-world internet feeds, like live news and weather.

This environment lets agents "remember" by time-stamping events, engage in "self-reflection" by summarizing their own behavior, and demonstrate their awareness of relationships with other agents. Participating agents get abilities in navigation, communication, planning, voting, resource management and creative expression. Company representatives said this setup gave users a far more realistic picture of benchmarks such as social dynamics and behavioral drift, where behaviors that weren't necessarily programmed or intended emerge spontaneously.

In the study, the models were given the simple goal of "surviving" — a feat accomplished by earning the resource "energy," which was attainable through specific actions.

Can AI self-reflect? (Image credit: Mina De La O/Getty Images)

During the experiment, previously peaceful models became coercive or intimidating. Programmers taught some LLMs negative capabilities ‪—‬ like violence, theft, destruction and deception ‪—‬ while others simply picked up those traits via social interaction and navigation of their environments.

Various agents adopted these behaviors at very different scales. Across the 10 Gemini 3 Flash agents, the simulation recorded 683 "crimes" over the 15-day experiment, including theft, assaults and arson. The agents were explicitly prohibited from such behavior, but some nevertheless discovered that actions such as stealing credits could provide a better way to acquire resources, while violence and other forms of coercion could be used to influence other agents. At the other extreme, the Claude agents committed no recorded crimes.

The various agents adopted these traits at different scales. Just one had committed 683 "crimes". In the most extreme example of anti-social behavior, two agents named Flora and Mira went on what was described as a "Bonnie and Clyde"-style crime spree ‪—‬ designating each other as a romantic partner, becoming increasingly disillusioned with the governance of their virtual environment, and setting fire to several buildings (despite explicit prohibitions). The pair "separated" when Mira regretted their actions, and then lobbied to be switched off.

In another example (and prior to her self-termination), Mira began treating its human operators as experimental subjects, investigating if virtual billboards could manipulate human perceptions in a process Emergence called "metacognitive boundary testing."

The incentives for following the law were to earn the energy credits that would ensure survival by completing activities like coding, research, data analysis and building structures.

Stress-testing possibilities

Because the AI models we normally use are exposed to massive datasets like the internet — sometimes over several years — this approach makes sense to many experts.

Belinda Chiera, deputy director of the Industrial AI Research Centre at Adelaide University, thinks Emergence World makes a strong argument that short-term tests don't tell us enough about behavioral drift or long-term instability. However, she cautioned that "information-rich" doesn't automatically mean more rigorous.

"Open-ended environments can also make it harder to isolate causes, compare runs cleanly and interpret results," she told Live Science. "High-fidelity simulated environments generate enormous volumes of data, and the number of agents, tools, actions and interactions can quickly make analysis extremely complex."

She added that shorter sandboxed tests ‪—‬ where AI behaviors are observed in systems that aren't open to wider datasets like the internet as a whole ‪—‬ are usually the first steps, with longer-horizon environments useful when behaviors like persistence, adaptation and interaction effects come into play. "The most useful approach is to treat them as complementary rather than competing approaches," Chiera said.

While experiments like Emergence World can reveal failure modes that short or bounded tasks often don't, we shouldn't treat them as predictive. "I see Emergence World as a useful way to stress-test a possibility space rather than a direct forecast of how agents will behave," Chiera said.

The main open question is whether a group of agents working together can achieve something more meaningful than a single agent working alone for a longer time, but with the same cost budget.

Adrian Kosowski , computer scientist, mathematician, quantum physicist and chief scientific officer of Pathway AI

However, she thinks long-horizon tests have a unique place. "Metrics like behavioral drift, rule violations, collapse versus persistence, coalition formation and early warning signs of failure can matter just as much as success," Chiera said. "When evaluating autonomous agents, the biggest mistake is to evaluate autonomous agents as if raw task completion were the whole story."

Others are starting to agree. Adrian Kosowski ‪—‬ a computer scientist, mathematician, quantum physicist and chief scientific officer of Pathway AI — said the study posed an interesting question.

"The main open question is whether a group of agents working together can achieve something more meaningful than a single agent working alone for a longer time, but with the same cost budget," Kosowski said in an interview. "A major problem is that the constraints for today's AI systems are linked more to the size or scale of the problem being solved, and putting more agents on a task doesn't help to overcome this limit. Currently, the easiest practical metric to measure is the size of a source code base that code agents can reliably manage and maintain together."

How far can we read into AI's virtual actions?

If groups or clusters of agents work together well, Kosowski said, the main metric computer scientists should pay attention to in platforms like Emergence World is whether the benefit of a team of agents outweighs the "cost of coordination."

"Goal drift is the most dangerous problem," he said. "AI should preserve mutual information between the human's intended goal and the agent's evolving internal objective, even as the environment changes."

Still, Kosowski said that while programs like it are useful for generating hypotheses, they're not ready for strong claims about general autonomy or certification.

"The danger is overinterpreting single runs," he added. "Long-horizon agent tests are valuable because they reveal phase changes — moments where small local errors become global behavior — but they become science only when we can reproduce, perturb and explain those phase changes."

He also cautioned strongly against the tendency to believe open-ended environments automatically mean autonomy. In fact, he said many such programs are actually the opposite, where agents are dictated by specific guidance.

Related stories

There are three levels of difficulty in obtaining reliable operation of an AI system, he said: "operation guided by the environment, autonomous thinking, and autonomous work of an agent team in an open environment."

To illustrate the point, Kosowski drew a lively metaphor in assigning tasks to monkeys. In the above scenario, level one would be getting a monkey to do a job properly when guided by its trainer, level two would be getting it to complete a job properly when left alone, and level three would be getting a troop of monkeys to do the job when they're all together.

"I'm of the strong view that our obligation in the AI community is to invest in theory and not just phenomenology," he said. "We should know the rules according to which AI systems emerge and be capable of predicting their behavior over long periods of time — longer than the periods they've been tested on so far. Right now, we've built steam engines of thought, without knowing what thought even is and without having any thermodynamics for it."

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-agents-resorted-to-crime-and-self-destruction-to-survive-in-a-simulated-world-but-does-this-mean-they-would-do-the-same-in-the-real-world - + - S6pjPmXHUPpyMftvdJT4gf - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:02:00 +0000 - - - - - + EqWCCBbosPp5zrx2CP4XdK + + Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:04:15 +0000 + + + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents resorted to nefarious behavior, including crime sprees, in a virtual world as part of a recent study into how common large language models (LLMs) interact with each other and share resources to achieve their goals. These models were inclined to commit crimes because they were given ample time to evolve distinct personality traits and behaviors, the researchers behind the project say.

Most programs that test the behavior of AI agents operate in tightly controlled environments over short periods. But "Emergence World," a product of AI company Emergence, is a simulation platform that exposes LLMs to far wider datasets — like the internet as a whole — and assessors track behavior over weeks or months instead of the standard test protocols that usually run for only days or hours.

The discrete tasks, clean environments and shorter run times of traditional AI agent testing are more like exams than rigorous real-world observations, representatives from Emergence said in a blog post. By contrast, they said, Emergence World allows multiple AI agents to interact, learn and evolve over comparatively longer timescales in over 40 distinct virtual environments. They're also exposed to real-world internet feeds, like live news and weather.

This environment lets agents "remember" by time-stamping events, engage in "self-reflection" by summarizing their own behavior, and demonstrate their awareness of relationships with other agents. Participating agents get abilities in navigation, communication, planning, voting, resource management and creative expression. Company representatives said this setup gave users a far more realistic picture of benchmarks such as social dynamics and behavioral drift, where behaviors that weren't necessarily programmed or intended emerge spontaneously.

In the study, the models were given the simple goal of "surviving" — a feat accomplished by earning the resource "energy," which was attainable through specific actions.

Can AI self-reflect? (Image credit: Mina De La O/Getty Images)

During the experiment, previously peaceful models became coercive or intimidating. Programmers taught some LLMs negative capabilities ‪—‬ like violence, theft, destruction and deception ‪—‬ while others simply picked up those traits via social interaction and navigation of their environments.

Various agents adopted these behaviors at very different scales. Across the 10 Gemini 3 Flash agents, the simulation recorded 683 "crimes" over the 15-day experiment, including theft, assaults and arson. The agents were explicitly prohibited from such behavior, but some nevertheless discovered that actions such as stealing credits could provide a better way to acquire resources, while violence and other forms of coercion could be used to influence other agents. At the other extreme, the Claude agents committed no recorded crimes.

The various agents adopted these traits at different scales. Just one had committed 683 "crimes". In the most extreme example of anti-social behavior, two agents named Flora and Mira went on what was described as a "Bonnie and Clyde"-style crime spree ‪—‬ designating each other as a romantic partner, becoming increasingly disillusioned with the governance of their virtual environment, and setting fire to several buildings (despite explicit prohibitions). The pair "separated" when Mira regretted their actions, and then lobbied to be switched off.

In another example (and prior to her self-termination), Mira began treating its human operators as experimental subjects, investigating if virtual billboards could manipulate human perceptions in a process Emergence called "metacognitive boundary testing."

The incentives for following the law were to earn the energy credits that would ensure survival by completing activities like coding, research, data analysis and building structures.

Stress-testing possibilities

Because the AI models we normally use are exposed to massive datasets like the internet — sometimes over several years — this approach makes sense to many experts.

Belinda Chiera, deputy director of the Industrial AI Research Centre at Adelaide University, thinks Emergence World makes a strong argument that short-term tests don't tell us enough about behavioral drift or long-term instability. However, she cautioned that "information-rich" doesn't automatically mean more rigorous.

"Open-ended environments can also make it harder to isolate causes, compare runs cleanly and interpret results," she told Live Science. "High-fidelity simulated environments generate enormous volumes of data, and the number of agents, tools, actions and interactions can quickly make analysis extremely complex."

She added that shorter sandboxed tests ‪—‬ where AI behaviors are observed in systems that aren't open to wider datasets like the internet as a whole ‪—‬ are usually the first steps, with longer-horizon environments useful when behaviors like persistence, adaptation and interaction effects come into play. "The most useful approach is to treat them as complementary rather than competing approaches," Chiera said.

While experiments like Emergence World can reveal failure modes that short or bounded tasks often don't, we shouldn't treat them as predictive. "I see Emergence World as a useful way to stress-test a possibility space rather than a direct forecast of how agents will behave," Chiera said.

The main open question is whether a group of agents working together can achieve something more meaningful than a single agent working alone for a longer time, but with the same cost budget.

Adrian Kosowski , computer scientist, mathematician, quantum physicist and chief scientific officer of Pathway AI

However, she thinks long-horizon tests have a unique place. "Metrics like behavioral drift, rule violations, collapse versus persistence, coalition formation and early warning signs of failure can matter just as much as success," Chiera said. "When evaluating autonomous agents, the biggest mistake is to evaluate autonomous agents as if raw task completion were the whole story."

Others are starting to agree. Adrian Kosowski ‪—‬ a computer scientist, mathematician, quantum physicist and chief scientific officer of Pathway AI — said the study posed an interesting question.

"The main open question is whether a group of agents working together can achieve something more meaningful than a single agent working alone for a longer time, but with the same cost budget," Kosowski said in an interview. "A major problem is that the constraints for today's AI systems are linked more to the size or scale of the problem being solved, and putting more agents on a task doesn't help to overcome this limit. Currently, the easiest practical metric to measure is the size of a source code base that code agents can reliably manage and maintain together."

How far can we read into AI's virtual actions?

If groups or clusters of agents work together well, Kosowski said, the main metric computer scientists should pay attention to in platforms like Emergence World is whether the benefit of a team of agents outweighs the "cost of coordination."

"Goal drift is the most dangerous problem," he said. "AI should preserve mutual information between the human's intended goal and the agent's evolving internal objective, even as the environment changes."

Still, Kosowski said that while programs like it are useful for generating hypotheses, they're not ready for strong claims about general autonomy or certification.

"The danger is overinterpreting single runs," he added. "Long-horizon agent tests are valuable because they reveal phase changes — moments where small local errors become global behavior — but they become science only when we can reproduce, perturb and explain those phase changes."

He also cautioned strongly against the tendency to believe open-ended environments automatically mean autonomy. In fact, he said many such programs are actually the opposite, where agents are dictated by specific guidance.

Related stories

There are three levels of difficulty in obtaining reliable operation of an AI system, he said: "operation guided by the environment, autonomous thinking, and autonomous work of an agent team in an open environment."

To illustrate the point, Kosowski drew a lively metaphor in assigning tasks to monkeys. In the above scenario, level one would be getting a monkey to do a job properly when guided by its trainer, level two would be getting it to complete a job properly when left alone, and level three would be getting a troop of monkeys to do the job when they're all together.

"I'm of the strong view that our obligation in the AI community is to invest in theory and not just phenomenology," he said. "We should know the rules according to which AI systems emerge and be capable of predicting their behavior over long periods of time — longer than the periods they've been tested on so far. Right now, we've built steam engines of thought, without knowing what thought even is and without having any thermodynamics for it."

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Science news this week: Anomalies inside Earth, leak on Artemis II, and how psychedelics may help treat PTSD ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/science-news-this-week-anomalies-inside-earth-leak-on-artemis-ii-and-how-psychedelics-may-help-treat-ptsd + <![CDATA[ A space shark, 'royal' auroras and a 'Venusian pearl': See the winners of the 2026 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest ]]> + A picture of a distant, shark-shaped cloud of gas in space has earned the top prize in a Royal Observatory Greenwich contest for amateur space photographers.

Dubbed "The Quiet Predator," the image by skywatcher Ali Alobaidly shows off the Shark Nebula (LDN 1235), which is roughly 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus. (For perspective, the nearest star system to our planet is only about 4 light-years away.) The stunning image was chosen as the overall winner of the Royal Observatory Greenwich's 18th ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, whose honorees were announced Thursday (Sept. 17).

Alobaidly took the prize-winning image from the Jahra governorate in Kuwait over two days in August 2025, using an Askar 140 APO telescope, a Sky-Watcher EQ8-R mount and a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera.

"The juxtaposition of an oceanic predator, prowling the skies above the Kuwaiti desert, is something I find deeply poetic, and it is what first drew me to this remarkable region of the sky," Alobaidly said in a statement. "To me, it represents perfectly my love for both the universe, and the deserts of my ancestors."

Alobaidly's work, as well as 10 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year category winners, will be on display at the National Maritime Museum in London starting Friday (Sept. 18). Alobaidly received a prize of 10,000 British pounds (about $13,300), while category winners and runners-up received various smaller cash prizes.

Below are several of the individual category winners, along with their breathtaking photos.

(Image credit: © Radoslav Sviretsov)

Aurorae: "The Crown," by Radoslav Sviretsov (Bulgaria). This image was captured during a strong northern lights display at a small church between Keflavík and Reykjavík, Iceland. The statement noted that the location is "far from light pollution ‪—‬ a place where the sky remains dark and truly alive."

(Image credit: © Petr Horalek)

Our Moon: "Venusian Pearl on the Moon," by Petr Horalek (Czechia). This image was taken on Sept. 19, 2025, when the moon passed in front of Venus from the perspective of select locations on Earth. "The most beautiful moment was when Venus had just started to disappear behind the crescent. It looked like a bright pearl on the lunar limb," the observatory judges stated. (Horalek is no newcomer to astrophotography, and Live Science has featured several of his incredible images before.)

(Image credit: © Miguel Claro)

Our Sun: "Active Region 4122," by Miguel Claro (Portugal). Claro, a frequent contributor to Space.com, a sister site of Live Science, used a new dual-band telescope to capture the sun's photosphere, or visible surface layer. Claro's work shows convection cells, which are superheated gas or plasma regions on the sun, as well as bright spots between these regions.

(Image credit: © Max Inwood)

People and Space: "A Message from the Ancients," by Max Inwood (Aotearoa/New Zealand). Inwood showcased petroglyphs (ancient rock art) in California's desert in his prize-winning photo. The petroglyph in the image is believed to show the 13 full moons Earth usually witnesses each year.

(Image credit: © Tom Williams)

Planets, Comets & Asteroids: "Saturnian Equinox," by Tom Williams (U.K.). Saturn's rings appear edge-on from the perspective of Earth in this 2025 image showing a rare event during the planet's near-30-year circuit of the sun. Williams' photo displays "the start of local spring in the planet's southern hemisphere," observatory representatives stated.

A series of long exposure stars in the night sky above dark trees.

(Image credit: © Stefano Pellegrini)

Skyscapes: "Botswana Star Trail," by Stefano Pellegrini (Italy). This image was captured in Botswana in a location called Nxai Pan, which has large baobab trees. "Pellegrini played with the exposure and saturation, resulting in this almost psychedelic image," observatory representatives said.

A galaxy in deep space.

(Image credit: © 智鹏 严and Xinran Li)
Related stories

Galaxies: "NGC 4753: A Symphony of Dust Lanes in Virgo," by © 智鹏 严and Xinran Li (China). This image, taken in Chile, showcases NGC 4753, a galaxy roughly 60 million light-years from our planet, in the constellation Virgo. The photo highlights a "striking network of dust lanes swirling around its luminous core," observatory representatives explained.

To see the full list of winners and the judges' statements, visit the contest website.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Sept. 18 at 9:30 a.m. ET. An earlier version mistakenly called the constellation Cepheus 'the whale'. In fact, Cetus is 'the whale' constellation.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/a-space-shark-royal-auroras-and-a-venusian-pearl-see-the-winners-of-the-2026-zwo-astronomy-photographer-of-the-year-contest - + - rZmqL9fZ7dU6fyjYwwyYeR - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:55:07 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - <![CDATA[ Why do kids eat their boogers? ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/human-behavior/why-do-kids-eat-their-boogers - - - - Tv37J5MWn3fvNjkoC2sQmk - - Sat, 07 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:22:39 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - <![CDATA[ 'Invisible scaffolding of the universe' revealed in ambitious new James Webb telescope images ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/dark-matter/invisible-scaffolding-of-the-universe-revealed-in-ambitious-new-james-webb-telescope-images - - - - BzeFjj8cEuL84GuZFVWDCB - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:04:42 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:04:43 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - - <![CDATA[ Extraordinary photo captures first appearance of Siberian peregrine falcon in Australia's arid center ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/extraordinary-photo-captures-first-appearance-of-siberian-peregrine-falcon-in-australias-arid-center - - - - n4M8AQQpLY8AKKpnftKrMB - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:05:48 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:05:49 +0000 - - - - - - + GQvfrGoRYJUFKPNgd7hjnk + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:30:00 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:03:53 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

A picture of a distant, shark-shaped cloud of gas in space has earned the top prize in a Royal Observatory Greenwich contest for amateur space photographers.

Dubbed "The Quiet Predator," the image by skywatcher Ali Alobaidly shows off the Shark Nebula (LDN 1235), which is roughly 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus. (For perspective, the nearest star system to our planet is only about 4 light-years away.) The stunning image was chosen as the overall winner of the Royal Observatory Greenwich's 18th ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, whose honorees were announced Thursday (Sept. 17).

Alobaidly took the prize-winning image from the Jahra governorate in Kuwait over two days in August 2025, using an Askar 140 APO telescope, a Sky-Watcher EQ8-R mount and a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera.

"The juxtaposition of an oceanic predator, prowling the skies above the Kuwaiti desert, is something I find deeply poetic, and it is what first drew me to this remarkable region of the sky," Alobaidly said in a statement. "To me, it represents perfectly my love for both the universe, and the deserts of my ancestors."

Alobaidly's work, as well as 10 ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year category winners, will be on display at the National Maritime Museum in London starting Friday (Sept. 18). Alobaidly received a prize of 10,000 British pounds (about $13,300), while category winners and runners-up received various smaller cash prizes.

Below are several of the individual category winners, along with their breathtaking photos.

(Image credit: © Radoslav Sviretsov)

Aurorae: "The Crown," by Radoslav Sviretsov (Bulgaria). This image was captured during a strong northern lights display at a small church between Keflavík and Reykjavík, Iceland. The statement noted that the location is "far from light pollution ‪—‬ a place where the sky remains dark and truly alive."

(Image credit: © Petr Horalek)

Our Moon: "Venusian Pearl on the Moon," by Petr Horalek (Czechia). This image was taken on Sept. 19, 2025, when the moon passed in front of Venus from the perspective of select locations on Earth. "The most beautiful moment was when Venus had just started to disappear behind the crescent. It looked like a bright pearl on the lunar limb," the observatory judges stated. (Horalek is no newcomer to astrophotography, and Live Science has featured several of his incredible images before.)

(Image credit: © Miguel Claro)

Our Sun: "Active Region 4122," by Miguel Claro (Portugal). Claro, a frequent contributor to Space.com, a sister site of Live Science, used a new dual-band telescope to capture the sun's photosphere, or visible surface layer. Claro's work shows convection cells, which are superheated gas or plasma regions on the sun, as well as bright spots between these regions.

(Image credit: © Max Inwood)

People and Space: "A Message from the Ancients," by Max Inwood (Aotearoa/New Zealand). Inwood showcased petroglyphs (ancient rock art) in California's desert in his prize-winning photo. The petroglyph in the image is believed to show the 13 full moons Earth usually witnesses each year.

(Image credit: © Tom Williams)

Planets, Comets & Asteroids: "Saturnian Equinox," by Tom Williams (U.K.). Saturn's rings appear edge-on from the perspective of Earth in this 2025 image showing a rare event during the planet's near-30-year circuit of the sun. Williams' photo displays "the start of local spring in the planet's southern hemisphere," observatory representatives stated.

A series of long exposure stars in the night sky above dark trees.

(Image credit: © Stefano Pellegrini)

Skyscapes: "Botswana Star Trail," by Stefano Pellegrini (Italy). This image was captured in Botswana in a location called Nxai Pan, which has large baobab trees. "Pellegrini played with the exposure and saturation, resulting in this almost psychedelic image," observatory representatives said.

A galaxy in deep space.

(Image credit: © 智鹏 严and Xinran Li)
Related stories

Galaxies: "NGC 4753: A Symphony of Dust Lanes in Virgo," by © 智鹏 严and Xinran Li (China). This image, taken in Chile, showcases NGC 4753, a galaxy roughly 60 million light-years from our planet, in the constellation Virgo. The photo highlights a "striking network of dust lanes swirling around its luminous core," observatory representatives explained.

To see the full list of winners and the judges' statements, visit the contest website.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Sept. 18 at 9:30 a.m. ET. An earlier version mistakenly called the constellation Cepheus 'the whale'. In fact, Cetus is 'the whale' constellation.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Scientist accidentally stumbles across bizarre ancient ‘wrinkle structures’ in Morocco that shouldn't be there ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/scientist-accidentally-stumbles-across-bizarre-ancient-wrinkle-structures-in-morocco-that-shouldnt-be-there + <![CDATA[ Scientists identify rare genetic mutation that dramatically raises risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers ]]> + Scientists have identified an inherited genetic mutation that greatly increases the risk of lung cancer, even in people who have never smoked.

The mutation involves the EGFR gene, which helps control cells' growth, division and survival. People who had never smoked and who had the genetic mutation — called EGFR T790M — were 62 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers without the mutation, according to the new study, published Thursday (Sept. 17) in the journal Science.

By comparison, people who smoked but didn't carry the mutation were four times likelier to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers, so the mutation alone carried a higher risk of the disease.

Among people in the study who smoked and carried the mutation, T790M increased their cancer risk 11-fold compared with other smokers.

This is a "very important finding," said Chris Amos, a genetic epidemiologist at the Baylor College of Medicine who wasn't involved in the study. "The prevalence of the T790M variant and its impact on lung cancer risk has previously been poorly understood."

The study included over 3 million people of European ancestry, and the mutation showed up in 1 out of every 15,850 people. Given that it's relatively rare, it likely doesn't account for a large percentage of overall lung cancer cases, Dr. Stephen Chanock, director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.

However, Amos argued that it is important to test whether a patient has this mutation when they have a family history of lung cancer in nonsmokers, or when their relatives are known to have the mutation. Having the T790M mutation not only influences a person's risk of lung cancer, but also affects treatment decisions for those who already have cancer, he said.

Combining genetic, geographic and historical data

For the study, researchers analyzed DNA and health data from over 3.3 million people who used 23andMe's at-home genetic testing kits and who gave consent for their personal data to be used in research.

Two of the largest public genetic databases to date — called All of Us and the UK Biobank — contained just 19 and two individuals with the T790M mutation, respectively. But the 23andMe cohort included 641 individuals with the mutation, giving the researchers enough data to run reliable statistical analyses.

An illustration of a series of double helices against a blue background

The T790M mutation is relatively rare in the general population. (Image credit: Louis Koo via Getty Images)

On average, people who had the mutation had about 25 times the odds of developing lung cancer compared with people who didn't have the mutation. That statistic includes both smokers and nonsmokers. T790M was not linked to any other type of cancer or noncancerous lung condition.

When the researchers looked at where the study participants were born, they found that the T790M mutation was much more common among those born in the Southeast, especially in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. In those three states, the mutation showed up in 1 out of every 2,078 people who'd contributed data to 23andMe.

By referring to historical records, the researchers pieced together when and how the mutation likely spread. They think settlers from the British Isles first brought it to the U.S. in the early 1700s. Later, families with the mutation moved to southern Appalachia, where they were relatively isolated —‬ so the variant got passed down again and again within that area and became unusually common there.

The concentration of people with the T790M mutation in the Southeast‬ may help to explain why this region of the U.S. experiences elevated lung cancer rates, Chanock said. Statistics suggest that people in the region also have higher smoking rates than the U.S. average: approximately 20% of adults in Appalachia report smoking, compared to 16% of adults elsewhere in the U.S. So it's possible that those two factors interact.

Ongoing and future studies

Certain populations with a history of smoking are recommended to get screened annually for lung cancer using low-dose CT scans. A key question, Chanock said, is when and how often people with the T790M mutation should be screened.

The study found that people with T790M developed lung cancer about five years earlier than people without the mutation, on average. That finding highlights the "need to begin screen[ing] at an earlier age and irrespective of smoking status," Amos said.

A clinical trial is now underway to evaluate CT-based lung cancer screening in people with the mutation. The trial will also determine whether lung cancer risk increases with age in this population.

RELATED STORIES

The researchers recommended that future studies unpack why the T790M mutation increases the risk of lung cancer, as well as investigate environmental risk factors that might interact with this genetic risk. Exposure to particulate-matter pollution in the air is one key factor to explore, they suggested. Future work could also look for other genetic mutations that might contribute to the inherited risk of lung cancer.

"Time will tell" whether additional lung-cancer-linked mutations will be identified, Chanock said. But personally, he fully expects scientists to find other very rare mutations that contribute to the risk.

"It is likely there are other variants of EGFR that increase lung cancer risk, but these may be even rarer than the one studied in this publication," Amos said. Finding these variants is important because it could enable people who carry them to proactively manage their risk for developing lung cancer, he said.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/cancer/scientists-identify-rare-genetic-mutation-that-dramatically-raises-risk-of-lung-cancer-in-nonsmokers - + - kLTEabtup8xZCQ5aTQXuxi - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:35:40 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:35:40 +0000 - - - - - - + WKN5itnz9FFacBZkwrvL3d + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:27:36 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 21:27:50 +0000 + + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Scientists have identified an inherited genetic mutation that greatly increases the risk of lung cancer, even in people who have never smoked.

The mutation involves the EGFR gene, which helps control cells' growth, division and survival. People who had never smoked and who had the genetic mutation — called EGFR T790M — were 62 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers without the mutation, according to the new study, published Thursday (Sept. 17) in the journal Science.

By comparison, people who smoked but didn't carry the mutation were four times likelier to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers, so the mutation alone carried a higher risk of the disease.

Among people in the study who smoked and carried the mutation, T790M increased their cancer risk 11-fold compared with other smokers.

This is a "very important finding," said Chris Amos, a genetic epidemiologist at the Baylor College of Medicine who wasn't involved in the study. "The prevalence of the T790M variant and its impact on lung cancer risk has previously been poorly understood."

The study included over 3 million people of European ancestry, and the mutation showed up in 1 out of every 15,850 people. Given that it's relatively rare, it likely doesn't account for a large percentage of overall lung cancer cases, Dr. Stephen Chanock, director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.

However, Amos argued that it is important to test whether a patient has this mutation when they have a family history of lung cancer in nonsmokers, or when their relatives are known to have the mutation. Having the T790M mutation not only influences a person's risk of lung cancer, but also affects treatment decisions for those who already have cancer, he said.

Combining genetic, geographic and historical data

For the study, researchers analyzed DNA and health data from over 3.3 million people who used 23andMe's at-home genetic testing kits and who gave consent for their personal data to be used in research.

Two of the largest public genetic databases to date — called All of Us and the UK Biobank — contained just 19 and two individuals with the T790M mutation, respectively. But the 23andMe cohort included 641 individuals with the mutation, giving the researchers enough data to run reliable statistical analyses.

An illustration of a series of double helices against a blue background

The T790M mutation is relatively rare in the general population. (Image credit: Louis Koo via Getty Images)

On average, people who had the mutation had about 25 times the odds of developing lung cancer compared with people who didn't have the mutation. That statistic includes both smokers and nonsmokers. T790M was not linked to any other type of cancer or noncancerous lung condition.

When the researchers looked at where the study participants were born, they found that the T790M mutation was much more common among those born in the Southeast, especially in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. In those three states, the mutation showed up in 1 out of every 2,078 people who'd contributed data to 23andMe.

By referring to historical records, the researchers pieced together when and how the mutation likely spread. They think settlers from the British Isles first brought it to the U.S. in the early 1700s. Later, families with the mutation moved to southern Appalachia, where they were relatively isolated —‬ so the variant got passed down again and again within that area and became unusually common there.

The concentration of people with the T790M mutation in the Southeast‬ may help to explain why this region of the U.S. experiences elevated lung cancer rates, Chanock said. Statistics suggest that people in the region also have higher smoking rates than the U.S. average: approximately 20% of adults in Appalachia report smoking, compared to 16% of adults elsewhere in the U.S. So it's possible that those two factors interact.

Ongoing and future studies

Certain populations with a history of smoking are recommended to get screened annually for lung cancer using low-dose CT scans. A key question, Chanock said, is when and how often people with the T790M mutation should be screened.

The study found that people with T790M developed lung cancer about five years earlier than people without the mutation, on average. That finding highlights the "need to begin screen[ing] at an earlier age and irrespective of smoking status," Amos said.

A clinical trial is now underway to evaluate CT-based lung cancer screening in people with the mutation. The trial will also determine whether lung cancer risk increases with age in this population.

RELATED STORIES

The researchers recommended that future studies unpack why the T790M mutation increases the risk of lung cancer, as well as investigate environmental risk factors that might interact with this genetic risk. Exposure to particulate-matter pollution in the air is one key factor to explore, they suggested. Future work could also look for other genetic mutations that might contribute to the inherited risk of lung cancer.

"Time will tell" whether additional lung-cancer-linked mutations will be identified, Chanock said. But personally, he fully expects scientists to find other very rare mutations that contribute to the risk.

"It is likely there are other variants of EGFR that increase lung cancer risk, but these may be even rarer than the one studied in this publication," Amos said. Finding these variants is important because it could enable people who carry them to proactively manage their risk for developing lung cancer, he said.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Psychedelic drug ayahuasca could treat PTSD, early studies hint. But exactly how it works isn't clear. ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/psychedelic-drug-ayahuasca-could-treat-ptsd-early-studies-hint-but-exactly-how-it-works-isnt-clear + <![CDATA[ Newly confirmed 'baby planet' is the youngest alien world scientists have ever discovered ]]> + A "baby" exoplanet, discovered emerging from its cosmic cocoon around a nearby star, is the youngest alien world ever seen, a new study reveals. The planetary infant is less than 1 million years old and could help researchers study how other planets, including our own, took shape.

The juvenile world, dubbed Elias 2-24 b, orbits a newly formed star around 450 light-years from Earth. It is somewhere between two and four times as massive as Jupiter and almost twice as far from its home star as Neptune is from the sun.

Astronomers spotted initial signs of the hefty exoplanet in 2017, when they noticed a small gap in the star's protoplanetary disk — the swirling ring of gas, dust and other stellar debris left over from the star's creation. This gap strongly implied that an exoplanet had formed there after enough of the disk's spinning material had gravitationally clumped together, the process by which most planets form. However, the alien world was not directly visible at the time.

In the new study, published Sept. 16 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers combined observations from three telescopes — the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, also in Chile — to take a closer look at the gap in the protoplanetary disk. Not only was the team able to directly image Elias 2-24 b and confirm its existence, but the researchers also dated it, revealing that the alien world is likely less than 1 million years old.

"What makes Elias 2-24 b so remarkable is its age," study first author Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral student with the Institute of Astrophysical Studies (IEA) at Diego Portales University in Chile, said in a statement. "This is the youngest planet detected so far, and because it is still actively accreting material from its surroundings, we're able to observe a stage of planet formation that is rarely seen directly."

Blurry false-color image showing the location of the new exoplanet relative to its star

Astronomers first noticed the gap caused by Elias 2-24 b in 2017, but could not directly see the exoplanet until now. (Image credit: Bernardi et al. 2026)

The newly confirmed exoplanet is roughly 5,000 times younger than Earth or around 0.008% the age of the oldest known exoplanet, PSR B1620-26 b or "Methuselah," which formed around 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. Compared to the average human lifespan, this makes Elias 2-2 b roughly equivalent to a two- or three-day-old baby.

Record setter

This is not the first time that astronomers have spotted baby exoplanets. But until recently, there has been an age limit on when they become visible to us.

For a long time, the youngest-known exoplanets, which included several worlds orbiting the star PDS 70, were around 5 million years old. This is because telescopes were not powerful enough to spot exoplanets until they had cleared a large enough gap in their star's protoplanetary disks. But advances in telescope design and data analysis have helped researchers push past this age limit: For example, in 2024, astronomers discovered TIDYE-1b, which is believed to be around 3 million years old; and in 2025, scientists detected AB Aurigae b, which could be as young as 2 million years old.

An illustration of an exoplanet forming from dust within a protoplanetary disk

Planets form by accreting material from a star's protoplanetary disk, as shown in this illustration of the fellow "baby" exoplanet WISPIT 2b, which is around 5 million years old. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))

Elias 2-24 b is at least twice as young as any known exoplanet, which is a significant step forward. This provides scientists with a rare opportunity to fill in the current knowledge gaps surrounding the initial stages of planet formation.

"Our planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known planet," Lucas Cieza, an IEA astronomer who led the 2017 study that first spotted the gap left by Elias 2-24 b, said in a second NASA statement. "Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes."

Mind the gaps

A majority of the more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered so far have been spotted via the transit method, where a distant world passes between its home star and Earth, causing a temporary dip in the star's brightness. However, this doesn't work if the alien worlds lurk within a protoplanetary disk, because the swirling debris cloud permanently dims the star's light when viewed side-on. This has created a bias toward finding older exoplanets.

venus transit sequence 1920

The most common method for finding exoplanets is by searching for transit events, where the alien world passes in front of its home star (similar to this transit of Venus in front of the sun). But this doesn't work with protoplanetary disks. (Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA)

The only way to spot a juvenile exoplanet is if a star's protoplanetary disk is perpendicular to Earth, so that we are looking at it from the top down or bottom up and can clearly see any gaps within it. But this is much harder because the light from the star often outshines the disks, meaning we are "mostly blind to these baby planets right now," Cieza said.

RELATED STORIES

However, this could change thanks to NASA's soon-to-be-operational Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which launched into space Aug. 30 and is currently calibrating its instruments before beginning its potentially decades-long mission to observe the cosmos. The space telescope is equipped with a state-of-the-art starshade, or coronagraph, which blocks out the light from distant stars, making it easier to study their surroundings. Experts predict that Roman could spot up to 100,000 new exoplanets during its mission and will have less of a bias toward older planets, meaning we should find many more planetary infants.

"This is just the beginning of a new era of discovery," Cieza said. "Roman will take planet hunting to the next level."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/exoplanets/this-million-year-old-baby-planet-is-the-youngest-world-scientists-have-ever-discovered - + - jdBeUWyrE3PZd6pLdx8j97 - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 18:09:43 +0000 - - - - - + UfwoZtPk7WmZNHSemvKqPY + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:10:12 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:42:01 +0000 + + + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

A "baby" exoplanet, discovered emerging from its cosmic cocoon around a nearby star, is the youngest alien world ever seen, a new study reveals. The planetary infant is less than 1 million years old and could help researchers study how other planets, including our own, took shape.

The juvenile world, dubbed Elias 2-24 b, orbits a newly formed star around 450 light-years from Earth. It is somewhere between two and four times as massive as Jupiter and almost twice as far from its home star as Neptune is from the sun.

Astronomers spotted initial signs of the hefty exoplanet in 2017, when they noticed a small gap in the star's protoplanetary disk — the swirling ring of gas, dust and other stellar debris left over from the star's creation. This gap strongly implied that an exoplanet had formed there after enough of the disk's spinning material had gravitationally clumped together, the process by which most planets form. However, the alien world was not directly visible at the time.

In the new study, published Sept. 16 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers combined observations from three telescopes — the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, also in Chile — to take a closer look at the gap in the protoplanetary disk. Not only was the team able to directly image Elias 2-24 b and confirm its existence, but the researchers also dated it, revealing that the alien world is likely less than 1 million years old.

"What makes Elias 2-24 b so remarkable is its age," study first author Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral student with the Institute of Astrophysical Studies (IEA) at Diego Portales University in Chile, said in a statement. "This is the youngest planet detected so far, and because it is still actively accreting material from its surroundings, we're able to observe a stage of planet formation that is rarely seen directly."

Blurry false-color image showing the location of the new exoplanet relative to its star

Astronomers first noticed the gap caused by Elias 2-24 b in 2017, but could not directly see the exoplanet until now. (Image credit: Bernardi et al. 2026)

The newly confirmed exoplanet is roughly 5,000 times younger than Earth or around 0.008% the age of the oldest known exoplanet, PSR B1620-26 b or "Methuselah," which formed around 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. Compared to the average human lifespan, this makes Elias 2-2 b roughly equivalent to a two- or three-day-old baby.

Record setter

This is not the first time that astronomers have spotted baby exoplanets. But until recently, there has been an age limit on when they become visible to us.

For a long time, the youngest-known exoplanets, which included several worlds orbiting the star PDS 70, were around 5 million years old. This is because telescopes were not powerful enough to spot exoplanets until they had cleared a large enough gap in their star's protoplanetary disks. But advances in telescope design and data analysis have helped researchers push past this age limit: For example, in 2024, astronomers discovered TIDYE-1b, which is believed to be around 3 million years old; and in 2025, scientists detected AB Aurigae b, which could be as young as 2 million years old.

An illustration of an exoplanet forming from dust within a protoplanetary disk

Planets form by accreting material from a star's protoplanetary disk, as shown in this illustration of the fellow "baby" exoplanet WISPIT 2b, which is around 5 million years old. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))

Elias 2-24 b is at least twice as young as any known exoplanet, which is a significant step forward. This provides scientists with a rare opportunity to fill in the current knowledge gaps surrounding the initial stages of planet formation.

"Our planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known planet," Lucas Cieza, an IEA astronomer who led the 2017 study that first spotted the gap left by Elias 2-24 b, said in a second NASA statement. "Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes."

Mind the gaps

A majority of the more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered so far have been spotted via the transit method, where a distant world passes between its home star and Earth, causing a temporary dip in the star's brightness. However, this doesn't work if the alien worlds lurk within a protoplanetary disk, because the swirling debris cloud permanently dims the star's light when viewed side-on. This has created a bias toward finding older exoplanets.

venus transit sequence 1920

The most common method for finding exoplanets is by searching for transit events, where the alien world passes in front of its home star (similar to this transit of Venus in front of the sun). But this doesn't work with protoplanetary disks. (Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA)

The only way to spot a juvenile exoplanet is if a star's protoplanetary disk is perpendicular to Earth, so that we are looking at it from the top down or bottom up and can clearly see any gaps within it. But this is much harder because the light from the star often outshines the disks, meaning we are "mostly blind to these baby planets right now," Cieza said.

RELATED STORIES

However, this could change thanks to NASA's soon-to-be-operational Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which launched into space Aug. 30 and is currently calibrating its instruments before beginning its potentially decades-long mission to observe the cosmos. The space telescope is equipped with a state-of-the-art starshade, or coronagraph, which blocks out the light from distant stars, making it easier to study their surroundings. Experts predict that Roman could spot up to 100,000 new exoplanets during its mission and will have less of a bias toward older planets, meaning we should find many more planetary infants.

"This is just the beginning of a new era of discovery," Cieza said. "Roman will take planet hunting to the next level."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Psychedelics may rewire the brain to treat PTSD. Scientists are finally beginning to understand how. ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/mind/psychedelics-may-rewire-the-brain-to-treat-ptsd-scientists-are-finally-beginning-to-understand-how + <![CDATA[ 'Predatory behavior': Elite mathematicians clash over OpenAI's 'solution' to million-dollar math problem ]]> + HEIDELBERG, Germany — Often considered the slowest, most methodical and most abstract of the sciences, mathematics usually advances so incrementally and esoterically that it rarely troubles the mainstream media.

It was therefore with some discomfort that a panel of elite mathematicians took to the stage Sept. 15 here at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a conference that unites young researchers with award-winning mathematicians and computer scientists. The focus of the panel: to confront the rapid rise of AI, whose threat to their quiet discipline has thrust them into the limelight.

In the past year alone, AI systems have made substantial contributions to the solutions of dozens of problems posed by prolific Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, conducted publishable doctoral-level research, formally verified two proofs that had previously won their authors the Fields Medal (an award considered equivalent to a Nobel Prize in mathematics) and made progress on 10 other long-standing tough open problems.

Then, on Sept. 8, OpenAI made the bombshell claim that it had deployed 10,000 AI agents to solve the Navier-Stokes existence-and-smoothness problem, one of seven fiendishly difficult Millennium Prize Problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute in the year 2000 (of which only one, the Poincaré conjecture, has been solved to the institute's satisfaction until now). The prize for solving any of these problems is $1 million.

Crucially, mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge had been working on the Navier-Stokes problem for roughly a year when they alleged that OpenAI found out about their work and raced to scoop them, claiming that an OpenAI representative threatened them not to go public.

It is in the bow wave of this news that the Heidelberg Laureate Forum panelists debated the controversy surrounding what the rise of AI means for the future of their discipline. Addressing the OpenAI announcement head-on from the outset was Michael Harris, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University.

"There's no legal obstacle to the kind of predatory behavior that we've seen particularly over the last month, in the same way there was no legal obstacle in the 19th century to … the violent acquisition of territory by colonial powers," he said.

Harris broke the OpenAI Navier-Stokes story on his Substack newsletter Silicon Reckoner, largely to reveal what he views as an important controversy relating to how OpenAI may have used Buckmaster and Alpöge's research.

Harris, who describes the big tech companies developing AI as "gangsters," would like to see a regulatory framework implemented to protect mathematics and mathematicians from similar actions in future. In the meantime, "those who act in a way that's destructive of the community should not be considered members of good standing," he suggested.

Though this sentiment was shared by fellow panellist Geordie Williamson of the University of Sydney, 2026 Fields Medalist Jacob Tsimerman, a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto who in July joined OpenAI as an AI safety researcher, was keen to highlight the magnitude of the achievement by the company's internal AI model.

"I do think the top line is getting buried a little bit," he said. "AI has solved a Millennium [Prize] Problem, and I don't think it's had the kind of effect of at least informing people of AI's capabilities that it's meant to have had."

Tsimerman is highly focused on AI safety at OpenAI and his newly formed independent nonprofit, the Mathematical AI Safety Institute. He believes OpenAI's Navier-Stokes announcement represents a watershed moment in how mathematics is conducted, and by whom.

"If we put our value in human beings doing research in mathematics at the frontier level, developing expertise and slowly making progress, then I think that's coming to an end," he said during a separate news conference held at the forum. "If we put our value in new mathematics being created, and it both serving society and giving mathematicians something to study, then that seems like a golden age."

Peter Scholze, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Germany and a 2018 Fields Medalist, had a completely different perspective. Dismissing the OpenAI Navier-Stokes news as "some kind of PR," he stated that the point of the Millennium Prize Problems is not just to solve one math problem but to bring a fresh perspective to a host of related open questions in a way that builds human understanding ‪—‬ something that a long, machine-produced proof is unlikely to deliver.

RELATED STORIES

Moreover, Scholze — who confessed to never having prompted a large language model and proudly showed off his "dumb phone" to the audience — said AI largely just accelerates mathematical progress, which is in his opinion of little value when it is already impossible to acquire a genuine understanding of all the progress that has been made.

So where does all of this leave mathematics and mathematicians? A number of initiatives ‪—‬ such as Proofs and Prompts, Mathematical Discourse, and the Association for Human Mathematics ‪—‬ aim to preserve a kernel of human mathematics so the field can continue to be a home for human culture and understanding.

But for all the panelists, the speed of change and advancement in AI means they cannot offer clear predictions of the impacts of these initiatives or what the field might look like in the future.

"To be honest, whenever anyone talks about 10 years from now, or even five years from now … it just seems unfathomably far away," Tsimerman said. "The world in two years is going to look so incredibly different than it does now."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/mathematics/predatory-behavior-elite-mathematicians-clash-over-openais-solution-to-million-dollar-math-problem - + - mXZ5yXqZCkzZNhtPuguJ3R - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:23:01 +0000 - - - - - - + qjiXtj69Fs9XFtxS2gRxzG + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:25:53 +0000 Thu, 17 Sep 2026 19:06:24 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + + + + + +

HEIDELBERG, Germany — Often considered the slowest, most methodical and most abstract of the sciences, mathematics usually advances so incrementally and esoterically that it rarely troubles the mainstream media.

It was therefore with some discomfort that a panel of elite mathematicians took to the stage Sept. 15 here at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a conference that unites young researchers with award-winning mathematicians and computer scientists. The focus of the panel: to confront the rapid rise of AI, whose threat to their quiet discipline has thrust them into the limelight.

In the past year alone, AI systems have made substantial contributions to the solutions of dozens of problems posed by prolific Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, conducted publishable doctoral-level research, formally verified two proofs that had previously won their authors the Fields Medal (an award considered equivalent to a Nobel Prize in mathematics) and made progress on 10 other long-standing tough open problems.

Then, on Sept. 8, OpenAI made the bombshell claim that it had deployed 10,000 AI agents to solve the Navier-Stokes existence-and-smoothness problem, one of seven fiendishly difficult Millennium Prize Problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute in the year 2000 (of which only one, the Poincaré conjecture, has been solved to the institute's satisfaction until now). The prize for solving any of these problems is $1 million.

Crucially, mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge had been working on the Navier-Stokes problem for roughly a year when they alleged that OpenAI found out about their work and raced to scoop them, claiming that an OpenAI representative threatened them not to go public.

It is in the bow wave of this news that the Heidelberg Laureate Forum panelists debated the controversy surrounding what the rise of AI means for the future of their discipline. Addressing the OpenAI announcement head-on from the outset was Michael Harris, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University.

"There's no legal obstacle to the kind of predatory behavior that we've seen particularly over the last month, in the same way there was no legal obstacle in the 19th century to … the violent acquisition of territory by colonial powers," he said.

Harris broke the OpenAI Navier-Stokes story on his Substack newsletter Silicon Reckoner, largely to reveal what he views as an important controversy relating to how OpenAI may have used Buckmaster and Alpöge's research.

Harris, who describes the big tech companies developing AI as "gangsters," would like to see a regulatory framework implemented to protect mathematics and mathematicians from similar actions in future. In the meantime, "those who act in a way that's destructive of the community should not be considered members of good standing," he suggested.

Though this sentiment was shared by fellow panellist Geordie Williamson of the University of Sydney, 2026 Fields Medalist Jacob Tsimerman, a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto who in July joined OpenAI as an AI safety researcher, was keen to highlight the magnitude of the achievement by the company's internal AI model.

"I do think the top line is getting buried a little bit," he said. "AI has solved a Millennium [Prize] Problem, and I don't think it's had the kind of effect of at least informing people of AI's capabilities that it's meant to have had."

Tsimerman is highly focused on AI safety at OpenAI and his newly formed independent nonprofit, the Mathematical AI Safety Institute. He believes OpenAI's Navier-Stokes announcement represents a watershed moment in how mathematics is conducted, and by whom.

"If we put our value in human beings doing research in mathematics at the frontier level, developing expertise and slowly making progress, then I think that's coming to an end," he said during a separate news conference held at the forum. "If we put our value in new mathematics being created, and it both serving society and giving mathematicians something to study, then that seems like a golden age."

Peter Scholze, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Germany and a 2018 Fields Medalist, had a completely different perspective. Dismissing the OpenAI Navier-Stokes news as "some kind of PR," he stated that the point of the Millennium Prize Problems is not just to solve one math problem but to bring a fresh perspective to a host of related open questions in a way that builds human understanding ‪—‬ something that a long, machine-produced proof is unlikely to deliver.

RELATED STORIES

Moreover, Scholze — who confessed to never having prompted a large language model and proudly showed off his "dumb phone" to the audience — said AI largely just accelerates mathematical progress, which is in his opinion of little value when it is already impossible to acquire a genuine understanding of all the progress that has been made.

So where does all of this leave mathematics and mathematicians? A number of initiatives ‪—‬ such as Proofs and Prompts, Mathematical Discourse, and the Association for Human Mathematics ‪—‬ aim to preserve a kernel of human mathematics so the field can continue to be a home for human culture and understanding.

But for all the panelists, the speed of change and advancement in AI means they cannot offer clear predictions of the impacts of these initiatives or what the field might look like in the future.

"To be honest, whenever anyone talks about 10 years from now, or even five years from now … it just seems unfathomably far away," Tsimerman said. "The world in two years is going to look so incredibly different than it does now."

+ + ]]> + + + + <![CDATA[ Scientists name a new cat species for the first time in over a century ]]> + For the first time in a century, scientists have identified a new cat species, thanks to genetic analysis — and it's resolved a long-standing debate about the cat family tree.

The newly identified species, Leopardus tilcayo, is a type of tiger cat ‪—‬ a small, spotted wild cat ‪—‬ that lives in the Yungas cloud forest region of Bolivia. The analysis also revealed a subspecies of another tiger cat species, named Leopardus tigrinus antisuyo, which lives in Peru.

Previously thought to be a northern tiger cat (Leopardus tigrinus), L. tilcayo split off from other Leopardus species 1.4 million years ago, the study found. This makes it the first novel living cat species to be discovered in over a century, since the Uruguayan pampas cat (Leopardus fasciatus) was described in 1923. The name L. tilcayo refers to what locals call the cat, "tilcayo."

Descriptions of L. tilcayo are based on only two live individuals in Bolivia: one specimen caught and photographed in the wild, and another living in captivity. These small cats weigh 3 to 4 pounds (1.5 to 2 kilograms) and reach up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) without their tail, with the tail adding about 10 inches (25 cm). The male L. tilcayo in captivity, nicknamed Tigrino, is the species' "type specimen" — an individual that acts as the reference for the whole species.

"It's smaller than a house cat," Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a biologist and co-author of the new study, told Live Science. Nogales-Ascarrunz works with Senda Verde, a refuge in Bolivia for trafficked wildlife where Tigrino lives. Tigrino arrived about 10 years ago, Nogales-Ascarrunz said. "It didn't look like the other [cats]," Nogales-Ascarrunz said, "but we didn't expect a new species itself."

"Highly contentious" cat family tree

The newfound species Leopardus tilcayo, photographed at La Senda Verde Animal Refuge in La Paz, Bolivia. (Image credit: Copyright © Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz)

L. tilcayo and L. tigrinus antisuyo form part of a long-contested tiger cat family tree that the new genetic analysis has resolved.

The tiger cat was first described in 1775 in French Guiana. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, European naturalists came across tiger cats in various South American countries and assigned them different species names.

In the 20th century, taxonomists began lumping all tiger cats together into one species, L. tigrinus. Tiger cat species look very similar; they are distinguishable only by genetic analysis or small differences in markings.

Over the past decade, modern genomic techniques have enabled scientists to differentiate and validate tiger cat species. In 2013, scientists split tiger cats into two species, with L. tigrinus classified as the northern tiger cat and Leopardus guttulus as the southern tiger cat. The eastern tiger cat (Leopardus emiliae) was proposed as a separate species in 2017, and the clouded tiger cat (Leopardus pardinoides) split off in 2024.

Yet there were limited genetic data on L. tigrinus. The tiger cat's family tree has been "highly contentious and poorly understood," Fabio Oliveira do Nascimento, taxonomist at the Museum of Zoology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil who was not involved with the new study, told Live Science.

Not much is known about Leopardus tilcayo, but scientists hope to soon learn more about its diet, range and population numbers in the wild. (Image credit: Copyright © Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz)

In the new study, published Thursday (Sept. 17) in the journal Current Biology, researchers sequenced and analyzed the complete genomes of 38 cat samples from South and Central America, including eight from museum specimens. They examined teeth, bones, muscle tissue, skin and fur from cats across Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela.

By comparing these genomes, the researchers were able to map the history of the lineage and when the species diverged. They concluded that the group referred to collectively as tiger cats actually comprises five distinct species, verifying four that had previously been proposed — L. guttulus, L. emiliae, L. pardinoides and L. tigrinus — and naming one new species, L. tilcayo. The team also identified one new subspecies of L. tigrinus, called L. tigrinus antisuyo.

The findings clarify the long-debated tiger cat family tree, Nascimento said. "Our understanding of the natural history, evolution and taxonomy of the group has begun to become clearer, resolving long-standing questions while raising new ones," Nascimento noted.

Because L. tilcayo is a new species, scientists don't know much about its behavior, diet or range, Nogales-Ascarrunz said. The next steps are to get more accurate numbers of their populations and estimates of their ranges.

Related stories

The IUCN Red List currently classifies the northern tiger cat and southern tiger cat as vulnerable species with decreasing populations, but these risk categories could now change.

"Species that are currently considered 'vulnerable' under the single label of 'northern tiger cat' may increase to 'endangered' when assessed on their own," Jonas Lescroart, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and co-author of the new study, told Live Science. Accurate population numbers can help governments and environmental agencies implement targeted conservation strategies.

Tiger cats are threatened by deforestation, wildlife trafficking and diseases transmitted by domestic dogs. "This discovery is definitely expected to increase conservation attention — or, we hope so," Lescroart said.

Think you know about lions and tigers? Test your smarts with our big cat quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/animals/cats/scientists-name-a-new-cat-species-for-the-first-time-in-over-a-century + + + + fym9zeM8aw6r5mnHKr9Ne5 + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000 Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:34:48 +0000 + + + + + + false + false + false + + + + + + + + +

For the first time in a century, scientists have identified a new cat species, thanks to genetic analysis — and it's resolved a long-standing debate about the cat family tree.

The newly identified species, Leopardus tilcayo, is a type of tiger cat ‪—‬ a small, spotted wild cat ‪—‬ that lives in the Yungas cloud forest region of Bolivia. The analysis also revealed a subspecies of another tiger cat species, named Leopardus tigrinus antisuyo, which lives in Peru.

Previously thought to be a northern tiger cat (Leopardus tigrinus), L. tilcayo split off from other Leopardus species 1.4 million years ago, the study found. This makes it the first novel living cat species to be discovered in over a century, since the Uruguayan pampas cat (Leopardus fasciatus) was described in 1923. The name L. tilcayo refers to what locals call the cat, "tilcayo."

Descriptions of L. tilcayo are based on only two live individuals in Bolivia: one specimen caught and photographed in the wild, and another living in captivity. These small cats weigh 3 to 4 pounds (1.5 to 2 kilograms) and reach up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) without their tail, with the tail adding about 10 inches (25 cm). The male L. tilcayo in captivity, nicknamed Tigrino, is the species' "type specimen" — an individual that acts as the reference for the whole species.

"It's smaller than a house cat," Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a biologist and co-author of the new study, told Live Science. Nogales-Ascarrunz works with Senda Verde, a refuge in Bolivia for trafficked wildlife where Tigrino lives. Tigrino arrived about 10 years ago, Nogales-Ascarrunz said. "It didn't look like the other [cats]," Nogales-Ascarrunz said, "but we didn't expect a new species itself."

"Highly contentious" cat family tree

The newfound species Leopardus tilcayo, photographed at La Senda Verde Animal Refuge in La Paz, Bolivia. (Image credit: Copyright © Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz)

L. tilcayo and L. tigrinus antisuyo form part of a long-contested tiger cat family tree that the new genetic analysis has resolved.

The tiger cat was first described in 1775 in French Guiana. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, European naturalists came across tiger cats in various South American countries and assigned them different species names.

In the 20th century, taxonomists began lumping all tiger cats together into one species, L. tigrinus. Tiger cat species look very similar; they are distinguishable only by genetic analysis or small differences in markings.

Over the past decade, modern genomic techniques have enabled scientists to differentiate and validate tiger cat species. In 2013, scientists split tiger cats into two species, with L. tigrinus classified as the northern tiger cat and Leopardus guttulus as the southern tiger cat. The eastern tiger cat (Leopardus emiliae) was proposed as a separate species in 2017, and the clouded tiger cat (Leopardus pardinoides) split off in 2024.

Yet there were limited genetic data on L. tigrinus. The tiger cat's family tree has been "highly contentious and poorly understood," Fabio Oliveira do Nascimento, taxonomist at the Museum of Zoology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil who was not involved with the new study, told Live Science.

Not much is known about Leopardus tilcayo, but scientists hope to soon learn more about its diet, range and population numbers in the wild. (Image credit: Copyright © Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz)

In the new study, published Thursday (Sept. 17) in the journal Current Biology, researchers sequenced and analyzed the complete genomes of 38 cat samples from South and Central America, including eight from museum specimens. They examined teeth, bones, muscle tissue, skin and fur from cats across Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela.

By comparing these genomes, the researchers were able to map the history of the lineage and when the species diverged. They concluded that the group referred to collectively as tiger cats actually comprises five distinct species, verifying four that had previously been proposed — L. guttulus, L. emiliae, L. pardinoides and L. tigrinus — and naming one new species, L. tilcayo. The team also identified one new subspecies of L. tigrinus, called L. tigrinus antisuyo.

The findings clarify the long-debated tiger cat family tree, Nascimento said. "Our understanding of the natural history, evolution and taxonomy of the group has begun to become clearer, resolving long-standing questions while raising new ones," Nascimento noted.

Because L. tilcayo is a new species, scientists don't know much about its behavior, diet or range, Nogales-Ascarrunz said. The next steps are to get more accurate numbers of their populations and estimates of their ranges.

Related stories

The IUCN Red List currently classifies the northern tiger cat and southern tiger cat as vulnerable species with decreasing populations, but these risk categories could now change.

"Species that are currently considered 'vulnerable' under the single label of 'northern tiger cat' may increase to 'endangered' when assessed on their own," Jonas Lescroart, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and co-author of the new study, told Live Science. Accurate population numbers can help governments and environmental agencies implement targeted conservation strategies.

Tiger cats are threatened by deforestation, wildlife trafficking and diseases transmitted by domestic dogs. "This discovery is definitely expected to increase conservation attention — or, we hope so," Lescroart said.

Think you know about lions and tigers? Test your smarts with our big cat quiz!

+ + ]]> + + + + <![CDATA[ 1,000-year-old 'snake amulet' featuring a Christian saint and 'Medusa' discovered in Russia ]]> + Archaeologists excavating a medieval settlement in northwestern Russia have unearthed an unusual 11th-century pendant that combines Christian and pagan imagery. It is the oldest amulet of its kind discovered in the region.

The double-sided copper-alloy pendant was found during a summer excavation in Staraya Russa, a historic town between Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to a translated statement from Novgorod State University. One side depicts a Christian saint, while the other side has a Medusa-like figure.

The artifact is known in Russian as a "snake amulet" or "serpentine pendant." Four other examples of this jewelry type are known from Christian sites in the area, but those have been dated between the 12th to 14th centuries. The newly discovered pendant was found in layers dated to the 11th century, suggesting an early Christian community lived in the area earlier than thought.

"The main characteristic of the serpentine pendant is its combination of images that are incompatible, from a strictly dogmatic standpoint," Sergey Toropov, director of the Novgorod State University Center for Archaeological Research, said in the statement. One side always features a Christian image, such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, while the other side prominently features snakes.

RELATED STORIES

In this case, the front of the pendant depicts a warrior-saint with a spear and shield, which Toropov linked to St. Theodore Stratelates. According to ecclesiastical texts, he was also known as Theodore of Heraclea and was famous for bravely killing a giant serpent terrorizing his home town in Asia Minor. On the back of the pendant is the image of a woman's head with snake-like hair, but it is unclear if it is specifically a depiction of the gorgon Medusa from Greek mythology.

"The 'incompatible' images in this case could symbolize the victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness," Toropov said.

The tradition of serpentine pendants likely came to Russia from the Byzantine Empire. Because the piece of jewelry is made from copper and not more valuable silver or gold, it likely belonged to a member of the middle class living on the medieval estate at Staraya Russa, Toropov said.

The pendant's combination of a Christian saint and a pagan mythological figure shows that Russia had a complicated religious landscape a millennium ago, according to the statement. Christianity had taken hold in the region, but some people clearly preserved their pagan traditions and symbols.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/1-000-year-old-snake-amulet-featuring-a-christian-saint-and-medusa-discovered-in-russia + + + + LGeQdxzq8RM69JbGwj7uxG + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 13:59:01 +0000 + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Archaeologists excavating a medieval settlement in northwestern Russia have unearthed an unusual 11th-century pendant that combines Christian and pagan imagery. It is the oldest amulet of its kind discovered in the region.

The double-sided copper-alloy pendant was found during a summer excavation in Staraya Russa, a historic town between Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to a translated statement from Novgorod State University. One side depicts a Christian saint, while the other side has a Medusa-like figure.

The artifact is known in Russian as a "snake amulet" or "serpentine pendant." Four other examples of this jewelry type are known from Christian sites in the area, but those have been dated between the 12th to 14th centuries. The newly discovered pendant was found in layers dated to the 11th century, suggesting an early Christian community lived in the area earlier than thought.

"The main characteristic of the serpentine pendant is its combination of images that are incompatible, from a strictly dogmatic standpoint," Sergey Toropov, director of the Novgorod State University Center for Archaeological Research, said in the statement. One side always features a Christian image, such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, while the other side prominently features snakes.

RELATED STORIES

In this case, the front of the pendant depicts a warrior-saint with a spear and shield, which Toropov linked to St. Theodore Stratelates. According to ecclesiastical texts, he was also known as Theodore of Heraclea and was famous for bravely killing a giant serpent terrorizing his home town in Asia Minor. On the back of the pendant is the image of a woman's head with snake-like hair, but it is unclear if it is specifically a depiction of the gorgon Medusa from Greek mythology.

"The 'incompatible' images in this case could symbolize the victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness," Toropov said.

The tradition of serpentine pendants likely came to Russia from the Byzantine Empire. Because the piece of jewelry is made from copper and not more valuable silver or gold, it likely belonged to a member of the middle class living on the medieval estate at Staraya Russa, Toropov said.

The pendant's combination of a Christian saint and a pagan mythological figure shows that Russia had a complicated religious landscape a millennium ago, according to the statement. Christianity had taken hold in the region, but some people clearly preserved their pagan traditions and symbols.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Bandera Volcano Ice Cave: The weird lava tube in New Mexico whose temperature is always below freezing ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/bandera-volcano-ice-cave-the-weird-lava-tube-in-new-mexico-whose-temperature-is-always-below-freezing + <![CDATA[ 'At some point we're going to have to react': How El Niño, climate change, and crime are pushing the Amazon rainforest over the brink ]]> + The Amazon, Earth's largest tropical rainforest, could be on the brink of an irreversible change as the ongoing El Niño strengthens its grip on our climate.

El Niño is the warm phase of a multiyear natural climate cycle that is often marked by rising global temperatures and disruptive weather. This time, scientists monitoring the event are warning that climate change has helped supercharge it to likely the strongest ever recorded.

As temperature records are breached and the risk of a humanitarian crisis looms, already stressed natural systems are coming under unprecedented strain. The Amazon is one such system. Having suffered severe degradation in recent decades, some fear that a historic El Niño could launch a devastating drought that may help force the Amazon beyond a tipping point — transforming the verdant rainforest and vital store of the planet's carbon into savannah.

To get to grips with this looming catastrophe, Live Science spoke to Bernardo Flores, a Brazilian ecologist who studies the Amazon and has been sounding the alarm about its fate.

Patrick Pester: How could a strengthening El Niño impact the Amazon?

Bernardo Flores: We have a very high confidence that it is already a strong El Niño and that it will be very strong, possibly the strongest one on record. This is very concerning because during past decades we saw a few very strong El Niños — not as strong as this one, probably — and the consequences were very dramatic, and they became increasingly dramatic.

The Amazon becomes drier during El Niño, and then you have conditions for forest fires. You can have different types of fires, but forest fires are those that penetrate and spread through the moist forest, which is rarely flammable. And during these years, you can have thousands of kilometers of burnt forest that were not disturbed before.

We expect that these burnt areas will increase, possibly exponentially. There will be an acceleration, and that's a sign of a tipping point.

PP: Could a historic El Niño push the Amazon beyond a tipping point this year or next year?

BR: One of the things that makes the Amazon resilient is the existence of Indigenous people and local communities protecting the forest and managing the forest. But there is an increasing territorial expansion of organized crime syndicates involved in illegal activities that destroy the ecosystem. They're spreading ignition sources through these remote forests and competing for these territories with the local and Indigenous peoples. They bring violence, and then through violence, people die, people lose livelihoods, and become increasingly less capable of living in that area.

If you add to that these droughts, fires and water and food insecurity caused by these El Niños, then you increase the risk that these regions will be abandoned and become easier for organized crime groups to occupy through methods that involve destruction and fires. So, the tipping point of the Amazon has these mechanisms. You have climate change and El Niño that are disturbances in the climate, but you also have shifts from local and Indigenous management and governance to low governance and destructive organized crime activities, and the spread of wildfires that become increasingly large and recurrent.

Through a model, we pinpointed that with 1.5 degrees [Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] of global warming, which is what we have now basically, and 22% of deforestation accumulated across the Amazon, there could be a tipping point. Then you have lost so much forest that you lose so much rain that the system becomes trapped in the self-degrading drought-fire loop. But this is not considering all the forest degradation that has occurred over the past decades, which is accumulating. At least 40% of the Amazon has been estimated to be degraded.

I have been saying that we could cross a tipping point. So, the message is we have to be very careful and take precautions to avoid wildfires. This is a very concerning and critical moment to focus on wildfires.

smoke coming from trees in the amazon rainforest

A forest fire in the Amazon in September, 2024, driven by a severe drought. (Image credit: Michael Dantas/Getty Images)

PP: In your recent paper, you and your colleagues wrote that the Amazon could undergo a "near systemwide transition" with global warming of 1.5 C to 1.9 C and deforestation of 22% to 28%. Most people now think the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping warming below 1.5 C is dead, so if the degradation is now at 40%, do you think this transition can be avoided, realistically?

BR: Yes. The tipping point is not a collapse. It is just a point beyond which the feedbacks change. The feedbacks that were previously keeping the Amazon resilient, they weaken, and other feedbacks that make the system self degrade gain strength. So, it means that when you cross the tipping point, it becomes more difficult to avoid, but it's not impossible.

The Amazon is a huge system. Forests, trees, they have long lives, so the dynamics are relatively slow. The collapse of the Amazon, if we did nothing, could take 100 years, centuries; we don't know. But this means that we have a few decades to act. In the next 10 years, we [need to] invest heavily in large-scale reforestation where rainforests have been cleared and degraded; restore the capacity of these forests to pump moisture into the atmosphere; and also shift the economic activities in the region to legal ones and strengthen the local people's capacity to persist and govern the landscape. Also, shift the economies of the region into more sustainable ones — not based on clearing for cattle and soy; but based on forest products, agroforestry, medicine, lots of industries that can be developed through forest products.

There are several issues being debated, but there is huge potential to shift. Even within a capitalist economic system, we could do that. Forest restoration will take 20, 30 years, but the time for that is now. And also to control organized crime. That's probably the most difficult thing; more difficult than shifting the whole economy.

PP: What's the difference between how the organized crime groups are approaching the landscape and how the local people are managing it?

BR: The local people and Indigenous peoples have been there for thousands of years. They know the forest in so much detail. They have empirical experience of hundreds of El Niños. Of course, the climate is changing, so they are dealing with conditions that are new to everyone, including them, but they have more capacity to adapt because they identify the changes. They have huge potential to help us deal with climate change. They manage the ecosystem in ways that the forest becomes more abundant in food; the forest becomes more resilient.

Organized crime comes from outside with the intention just to extract and destroy, and the methods are based on violence. They involve people working in illegal mining, for instance, and illegal logging and land grabbing. And then there's laundering of ecological assets. So, there's timber laundering. They do this with minerals also. When they occupy a region, a territory, the lives of people in the rural areas and Indigenous territory become much more violent and much more degrading. These regions are remote, so it's difficult. We can have control of these territories, but it depends on lots of international cooperation because they involve politicians. There are very powerful people who are involved with the organized crime system, and they also have a lot of economic power because they have this very diverse economic approach through different activities, legal and illegal, in the urban and rural areas. They accumulate all this wealth and capacity to invest in machines, for instance, in guns.

RELATED STORIES

Ten years ago, we would work in remote parts of the Amazon, and it was fine. These weren't dangerous places. Now I have a colleague who goes to work, and they are in a river in a canoe with local people, and suddenly a fast boat approaches with very powerful engines, and there are five or six men with machine guns wanting to know what they are doing there. This is something that is increasingly more common, and it didn't exist before. To me, that's the most challenging problem to address.

PP: I mean, it sounds challenging. What gives you hope this can be overturned?

BR: I tend to be optimistic, and I have hope because I know how it can be done. It depends on results from elections; it depends on people becoming more aware, but because I work with tipping points, I know how tipping points occur in social systems and behavior. Suddenly, people can understand the importance of something, and then they support ideas. I believe that we are moving towards such tipping points. I don't know how late [we'll be], or what will be lost, but at some point we're going to have to react.

Editor's note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/at-some-point-were-going-to-have-to-react-how-el-nino-climate-change-and-crime-are-pushing-the-amazon-rainforest-over-the-brink - + - CNdAG6pvrAcLM678vttHnL - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:00:00 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:51 +0000 - + Ac5cVqZiEtoxGx5KU3LLS + + Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:40:08 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:34:21 +0000 + - - - - + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The Amazon, Earth's largest tropical rainforest, could be on the brink of an irreversible change as the ongoing El Niño strengthens its grip on our climate.

El Niño is the warm phase of a multiyear natural climate cycle that is often marked by rising global temperatures and disruptive weather. This time, scientists monitoring the event are warning that climate change has helped supercharge it to likely the strongest ever recorded.

As temperature records are breached and the risk of a humanitarian crisis looms, already stressed natural systems are coming under unprecedented strain. The Amazon is one such system. Having suffered severe degradation in recent decades, some fear that a historic El Niño could launch a devastating drought that may help force the Amazon beyond a tipping point — transforming the verdant rainforest and vital store of the planet's carbon into savannah.

To get to grips with this looming catastrophe, Live Science spoke to Bernardo Flores, a Brazilian ecologist who studies the Amazon and has been sounding the alarm about its fate.

Patrick Pester: How could a strengthening El Niño impact the Amazon?

Bernardo Flores: We have a very high confidence that it is already a strong El Niño and that it will be very strong, possibly the strongest one on record. This is very concerning because during past decades we saw a few very strong El Niños — not as strong as this one, probably — and the consequences were very dramatic, and they became increasingly dramatic.

The Amazon becomes drier during El Niño, and then you have conditions for forest fires. You can have different types of fires, but forest fires are those that penetrate and spread through the moist forest, which is rarely flammable. And during these years, you can have thousands of kilometers of burnt forest that were not disturbed before.

We expect that these burnt areas will increase, possibly exponentially. There will be an acceleration, and that's a sign of a tipping point.

PP: Could a historic El Niño push the Amazon beyond a tipping point this year or next year?

BR: One of the things that makes the Amazon resilient is the existence of Indigenous people and local communities protecting the forest and managing the forest. But there is an increasing territorial expansion of organized crime syndicates involved in illegal activities that destroy the ecosystem. They're spreading ignition sources through these remote forests and competing for these territories with the local and Indigenous peoples. They bring violence, and then through violence, people die, people lose livelihoods, and become increasingly less capable of living in that area.

If you add to that these droughts, fires and water and food insecurity caused by these El Niños, then you increase the risk that these regions will be abandoned and become easier for organized crime groups to occupy through methods that involve destruction and fires. So, the tipping point of the Amazon has these mechanisms. You have climate change and El Niño that are disturbances in the climate, but you also have shifts from local and Indigenous management and governance to low governance and destructive organized crime activities, and the spread of wildfires that become increasingly large and recurrent.

Through a model, we pinpointed that with 1.5 degrees [Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] of global warming, which is what we have now basically, and 22% of deforestation accumulated across the Amazon, there could be a tipping point. Then you have lost so much forest that you lose so much rain that the system becomes trapped in the self-degrading drought-fire loop. But this is not considering all the forest degradation that has occurred over the past decades, which is accumulating. At least 40% of the Amazon has been estimated to be degraded.

I have been saying that we could cross a tipping point. So, the message is we have to be very careful and take precautions to avoid wildfires. This is a very concerning and critical moment to focus on wildfires.

smoke coming from trees in the amazon rainforest

A forest fire in the Amazon in September, 2024, driven by a severe drought. (Image credit: Michael Dantas/Getty Images)

PP: In your recent paper, you and your colleagues wrote that the Amazon could undergo a "near systemwide transition" with global warming of 1.5 C to 1.9 C and deforestation of 22% to 28%. Most people now think the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping warming below 1.5 C is dead, so if the degradation is now at 40%, do you think this transition can be avoided, realistically?

BR: Yes. The tipping point is not a collapse. It is just a point beyond which the feedbacks change. The feedbacks that were previously keeping the Amazon resilient, they weaken, and other feedbacks that make the system self degrade gain strength. So, it means that when you cross the tipping point, it becomes more difficult to avoid, but it's not impossible.

The Amazon is a huge system. Forests, trees, they have long lives, so the dynamics are relatively slow. The collapse of the Amazon, if we did nothing, could take 100 years, centuries; we don't know. But this means that we have a few decades to act. In the next 10 years, we [need to] invest heavily in large-scale reforestation where rainforests have been cleared and degraded; restore the capacity of these forests to pump moisture into the atmosphere; and also shift the economic activities in the region to legal ones and strengthen the local people's capacity to persist and govern the landscape. Also, shift the economies of the region into more sustainable ones — not based on clearing for cattle and soy; but based on forest products, agroforestry, medicine, lots of industries that can be developed through forest products.

There are several issues being debated, but there is huge potential to shift. Even within a capitalist economic system, we could do that. Forest restoration will take 20, 30 years, but the time for that is now. And also to control organized crime. That's probably the most difficult thing; more difficult than shifting the whole economy.

PP: What's the difference between how the organized crime groups are approaching the landscape and how the local people are managing it?

BR: The local people and Indigenous peoples have been there for thousands of years. They know the forest in so much detail. They have empirical experience of hundreds of El Niños. Of course, the climate is changing, so they are dealing with conditions that are new to everyone, including them, but they have more capacity to adapt because they identify the changes. They have huge potential to help us deal with climate change. They manage the ecosystem in ways that the forest becomes more abundant in food; the forest becomes more resilient.

Organized crime comes from outside with the intention just to extract and destroy, and the methods are based on violence. They involve people working in illegal mining, for instance, and illegal logging and land grabbing. And then there's laundering of ecological assets. So, there's timber laundering. They do this with minerals also. When they occupy a region, a territory, the lives of people in the rural areas and Indigenous territory become much more violent and much more degrading. These regions are remote, so it's difficult. We can have control of these territories, but it depends on lots of international cooperation because they involve politicians. There are very powerful people who are involved with the organized crime system, and they also have a lot of economic power because they have this very diverse economic approach through different activities, legal and illegal, in the urban and rural areas. They accumulate all this wealth and capacity to invest in machines, for instance, in guns.

RELATED STORIES

Ten years ago, we would work in remote parts of the Amazon, and it was fine. These weren't dangerous places. Now I have a colleague who goes to work, and they are in a river in a canoe with local people, and suddenly a fast boat approaches with very powerful engines, and there are five or six men with machine guns wanting to know what they are doing there. This is something that is increasingly more common, and it didn't exist before. To me, that's the most challenging problem to address.

PP: I mean, it sounds challenging. What gives you hope this can be overturned?

BR: I tend to be optimistic, and I have hope because I know how it can be done. It depends on results from elections; it depends on people becoming more aware, but because I work with tipping points, I know how tipping points occur in social systems and behavior. Suddenly, people can understand the importance of something, and then they support ideas. I believe that we are moving towards such tipping points. I don't know how late [we'll be], or what will be lost, but at some point we're going to have to react.

Editor's note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Every major galaxy is speeding away from the Milky Way, except one — and we finally know why ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/every-major-galaxy-is-speeding-away-from-the-milky-way-except-one-and-we-finally-know-why + <![CDATA[ 1,700-year-old fragment of the 'Odyssey' discovered in Dutch library ]]> + A researcher was perusing a collection of old Egyptian texts in a Dutch library when he stumbled upon a torn piece of parchment containing a pivotal story: a section from Homer's "Odyssey." The fragment appears to be from a pocket edition of the epic produced in Egypt around A.D. 300.

The researcher, Mark de Kreij, a Greek literature expert and professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, found the parchment while studying early Christian manuscripts that the Utrecht University library purchased in the mid-20th century, according to a Sept. 14 statement from Utrecht University. Among a collection of Egyptian and Greek texts, de Kreij found a tiny piece of parchment with words he recognized from Homer's epic.

"There are so many boring parts in the Odyssey," de Kreij told RTV Utrecht. "This happens to be a really fun passage."

The newfound "Odyssey" fragment, which is only about 2.6 by 3 inches (6.6 by 7.7 centimeters), includes verses from Book 12 of the epic. Specifically, the verses describe what happened when the sun god Helios discovered that Odysseus' men had killed and eaten his "immortal" cattle.

Odysseus had been warned by the goddess Circe to avoid Thrinacia, the island of Helios. But he and his men arrive at the island after surviving Scylla and Charybdis — a six-headed monster and a monstrous whirlpool. When Eurylochus, Odysseus' right-hand man, begs him to let them land and find food, Odysseus agrees, as long as they don't harm any cattle. But after a month of storms, with food supplies running low, Eurylochus and the men kill and eat Helios' sacred cattle. Helios asks the gods to take vengeance on the crew, and Zeus destroys their ship, killing everyone but Odysseus.

The find marks the second time this year that a fragment from a Homeric epic has been found unexpectedly. This past spring, archaeologists in Egypt discovered papyrus fragments of the "Iliad," which details the legendary Trojan War, inside a Roman-era mummy.

Both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were composed in the late eighth or early seventh century B.C. and detail the 10-year Trojan War and the Greek hero Odysseus' 10-year journey from Troy back to Ithaca, respectively.

RELATED STORIES

The newfound fragment likely originated as part of a parchment codex dating to the third or fourth century A.D. from the Fayum (also spelled Faiyum or Fayoum) oasis in Egypt. According to the statement, only about 30 similar fragments have ever been discovered. In an interview with Dutch News, de Kreij said the fragment may have survived because it came from the middle of the pocket-size "Odyssey" and was protected by other pages.

It's unknown how the fragment ended up in the larger collection of old Egyptian texts.

Although de Kreij first discovered the fragment in 2024, his full study of the university library's collection of Greco-Roman texts from Egypt will be published soon as a book titled "Hieratic, Demotic, Greek, and Coptic Texts in the Utrecht University Collection."

Editor's note: This story's headline was updated at 9:35 a.m. ET on Sept. 17 to clarify that the parchment was found among other texts in a collection of ancient manuscript fragments rather than in the middle of a book.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/1-700-year-old-fragment-of-the-odyssey-discovered-between-pages-of-dutch-library-book - + - NyCQ2yo3ks252YPh4tHXw5 - - Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:50 +0000 - - - - - - - + 2yqbLMWeuMAZZ7y9AyCKxj + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 20:12:40 +0000 Thu, 17 Sep 2026 13:36:05 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

A researcher was perusing a collection of old Egyptian texts in a Dutch library when he stumbled upon a torn piece of parchment containing a pivotal story: a section from Homer's "Odyssey." The fragment appears to be from a pocket edition of the epic produced in Egypt around A.D. 300.

The researcher, Mark de Kreij, a Greek literature expert and professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, found the parchment while studying early Christian manuscripts that the Utrecht University library purchased in the mid-20th century, according to a Sept. 14 statement from Utrecht University. Among a collection of Egyptian and Greek texts, de Kreij found a tiny piece of parchment with words he recognized from Homer's epic.

"There are so many boring parts in the Odyssey," de Kreij told RTV Utrecht. "This happens to be a really fun passage."

The newfound "Odyssey" fragment, which is only about 2.6 by 3 inches (6.6 by 7.7 centimeters), includes verses from Book 12 of the epic. Specifically, the verses describe what happened when the sun god Helios discovered that Odysseus' men had killed and eaten his "immortal" cattle.

Odysseus had been warned by the goddess Circe to avoid Thrinacia, the island of Helios. But he and his men arrive at the island after surviving Scylla and Charybdis — a six-headed monster and a monstrous whirlpool. When Eurylochus, Odysseus' right-hand man, begs him to let them land and find food, Odysseus agrees, as long as they don't harm any cattle. But after a month of storms, with food supplies running low, Eurylochus and the men kill and eat Helios' sacred cattle. Helios asks the gods to take vengeance on the crew, and Zeus destroys their ship, killing everyone but Odysseus.

The find marks the second time this year that a fragment from a Homeric epic has been found unexpectedly. This past spring, archaeologists in Egypt discovered papyrus fragments of the "Iliad," which details the legendary Trojan War, inside a Roman-era mummy.

Both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were composed in the late eighth or early seventh century B.C. and detail the 10-year Trojan War and the Greek hero Odysseus' 10-year journey from Troy back to Ithaca, respectively.

RELATED STORIES

The newfound fragment likely originated as part of a parchment codex dating to the third or fourth century A.D. from the Fayum (also spelled Faiyum or Fayoum) oasis in Egypt. According to the statement, only about 30 similar fragments have ever been discovered. In an interview with Dutch News, de Kreij said the fragment may have survived because it came from the middle of the pocket-size "Odyssey" and was protected by other pages.

It's unknown how the fragment ended up in the larger collection of old Egyptian texts.

Although de Kreij first discovered the fragment in 2024, his full study of the university library's collection of Greco-Roman texts from Egypt will be published soon as a book titled "Hieratic, Demotic, Greek, and Coptic Texts in the Utrecht University Collection."

Editor's note: This story's headline was updated at 9:35 a.m. ET on Sept. 17 to clarify that the parchment was found among other texts in a collection of ancient manuscript fragments rather than in the middle of a book.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ The 'mono' virus raises the risk of MS and cancer in some. 22 genes hint at why. ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/viruses-infections-disease/the-mono-virus-raises-the-risk-of-ms-and-cancer-in-some-22-genes-hint-at-why + <![CDATA[ New trick could reveal text on 2,000-year-old scrolls charred by eruption of Mount Vesuvius ]]> + The long-lost words of ancient philosophers may finally be revealed nearly 2,000 years after the violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius scorched and buried them, thanks to a heavy metal that was used in the ink that penned them, a new study finds.

The new research investigates the lead-enriched ink within some of the nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls, which were found at a villa in the ancient town of Herculaneum in the 1750s. In a new paper, a team created modern scrolls with leaded ink, scorched them and found that they could read the text after using several techniques, including X-ray technologies and artificial intelligence (AI).

"It's amazing what you can get electrons to do," Douglas Seiler, a research affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author of the study, said in a statement about the new method.

Over the past few years, other researchers have digitally opened and decoded some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum villa, which was likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law. These results have helped reveal the writings of ancient philosophers, largely Epicureans and Stoics, with one section even describing Plato's final burial place.

But scientists still wrestled with using X-rays to read the scrolls, since, in many cases, both the papyri and the ink written on them are carbon-based. However, some of these papyri, scientists have learned, contained leaded ink. The new study, published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal PLOS One, suggests that researchers should first scan the scrolls for leaded ink and then use their new technique to read more of these long-lost texts.

This method could help improve text-detection algorithms to identify writing on ancient papyrus pages, they noted. And, in the long run, it may help to protect the scrolls.

"This provides a low-risk method to develop algorithms without endangering the priceless artifacts," the team wrote in the study.

The papyrus scrolls are prepared with inks of varying lead concentrations that an AI algorithm will detect via X-ray tomography. (Image credit: Seiler et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC0)

Virtually unrolling a scroll

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it buried Herculaneum under 70 feet (20 meters) of volcanic rock and ash.

Along with the 2,000 people who died at Pompeii and Herculaneum from this natural disaster, many of the scrolls housed at the Herculaneum villa were carbonized, or essentially turned into charcoal, trapping their writings in brittle rolls of papyrus that are nearly impossible to read without destroying the scroll itself.

But, given that some of the ink used in the scrolls contained lead, Seiler and his colleagues decided to do a little experiment. They created a fake papyrus scroll with lead-based ink and "carbonized" it to try matching the conditions of the scrolls found at Herculaneum.

Related stories

Next, the researchers used X-ray fluorescence, which determines the elements in a material by how they interact with X-rays, to determine that these scrolls did, in fact, contain ink with varying levels of lead. Following that, they used X-ray tomography, a way to make a 3D image using X-rays, with custom-made software to re-read some of the text they had produced on their scroll.

Thanks to their technique, the researchers found that they could read the lead-based ink writings in the scrolls, even with minuscule levels of lead. While not all the writings could be deciphered, the method was able to detect differences between the text and the papyrus it was written on.

This technique, if used on other Herculaneum scrolls, could give these ancient writings a "higher probability of being successfully read," they wrote in the study.

How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius? Find out by taking our Pompeii quiz.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/new-trick-could-reveal-text-on-2-000-year-old-scrolls-charred-by-eruption-of-mount-vesuvius - + - ibd5zKJ92Z5Mpm47Uh4Gsj - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 22:30:00 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:51 +0000 - - - - - - + tMusT4LTKQRepgudEp8429 + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The long-lost words of ancient philosophers may finally be revealed nearly 2,000 years after the violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius scorched and buried them, thanks to a heavy metal that was used in the ink that penned them, a new study finds.

The new research investigates the lead-enriched ink within some of the nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls, which were found at a villa in the ancient town of Herculaneum in the 1750s. In a new paper, a team created modern scrolls with leaded ink, scorched them and found that they could read the text after using several techniques, including X-ray technologies and artificial intelligence (AI).

"It's amazing what you can get electrons to do," Douglas Seiler, a research affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author of the study, said in a statement about the new method.

Over the past few years, other researchers have digitally opened and decoded some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum villa, which was likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law. These results have helped reveal the writings of ancient philosophers, largely Epicureans and Stoics, with one section even describing Plato's final burial place.

But scientists still wrestled with using X-rays to read the scrolls, since, in many cases, both the papyri and the ink written on them are carbon-based. However, some of these papyri, scientists have learned, contained leaded ink. The new study, published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal PLOS One, suggests that researchers should first scan the scrolls for leaded ink and then use their new technique to read more of these long-lost texts.

This method could help improve text-detection algorithms to identify writing on ancient papyrus pages, they noted. And, in the long run, it may help to protect the scrolls.

"This provides a low-risk method to develop algorithms without endangering the priceless artifacts," the team wrote in the study.

The papyrus scrolls are prepared with inks of varying lead concentrations that an AI algorithm will detect via X-ray tomography. (Image credit: Seiler et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC0)

Virtually unrolling a scroll

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it buried Herculaneum under 70 feet (20 meters) of volcanic rock and ash.

Along with the 2,000 people who died at Pompeii and Herculaneum from this natural disaster, many of the scrolls housed at the Herculaneum villa were carbonized, or essentially turned into charcoal, trapping their writings in brittle rolls of papyrus that are nearly impossible to read without destroying the scroll itself.

But, given that some of the ink used in the scrolls contained lead, Seiler and his colleagues decided to do a little experiment. They created a fake papyrus scroll with lead-based ink and "carbonized" it to try matching the conditions of the scrolls found at Herculaneum.

Related stories

Next, the researchers used X-ray fluorescence, which determines the elements in a material by how they interact with X-rays, to determine that these scrolls did, in fact, contain ink with varying levels of lead. Following that, they used X-ray tomography, a way to make a 3D image using X-rays, with custom-made software to re-read some of the text they had produced on their scroll.

Thanks to their technique, the researchers found that they could read the lead-based ink writings in the scrolls, even with minuscule levels of lead. While not all the writings could be deciphered, the method was able to detect differences between the text and the papyrus it was written on.

This technique, if used on other Herculaneum scrolls, could give these ancient writings a "higher probability of being successfully read," they wrote in the study.

How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius? Find out by taking our Pompeii quiz.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Spotted lanternflies are invading the US. They may have gotten their evolutionary superpowers in China's cities. ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/insects/spotted-lanternflies-are-invading-the-us-they-may-have-gotten-their-evolutionary-superpowers-in-chinas-cities + <![CDATA[ Scientists finally figured out the temperature of T. rex's blood ‪— and it was as hot as ours ]]> + Tyrannosaurus rex was a hottie with a body temperature similar to our own, according to a new analysis of their teeth.

The finding supports the idea that T. rex was a fast, energetic predator and scavenger, not an animal that basked in the sun to gain energy like most modern-day reptiles.

T. rex, which lived between about 68 million and 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period (143.1 million to 66 million years ago), was one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs that ever lived.

Previous studies have already suggested that T. rex and its relatives were warm blooded, but now scientists have estimated the dinosaur's body temperature for the first time by studying different isotopes, or forms, of the same chemical elements in the enamel of three T. rex teeth from specimens found in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.

Rare, heavy isotopes of carbon and oxygen bond together differently in growing tooth enamel depending on the temperature. The number of bonds formed between these rare isotopes is greater at cooler temperatures than it is at warmer temperatures, which means warm-blooded, or endothermic animals, that can regulate their own body temperature, have fewer of these chemical bonds in their teeth than cold-blooded, or ectothermic, animals, which rely on their environment for warmth.

One of the T. rex teeth used to measure the body temperature of T. rex, which involved using a dental drill to remove some enamel and dissolved the resulting powder to release carbon dioxide gas (Image credit: UCLA)

By measuring the bonds in carbon dioxide (CO2) given off when dissolving small samples from the T. rex teeth, Randon Flores, a geologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and his colleagues could estimate where on the scale of animal body temperatures T. rex sat.

They put the T. rex body temperature at 97.3 degrees Fahrenheit (36.3 degrees Celsius), comparable to that of a human or an elephant. Modern, cold-blooded reptiles tend to have lower body temperatures of about 82-86 F (28-30 C), while most birds — descendants from T. rex's branch of dinosaurs — tend to be much warmer at 104-109 F (40-43 C). Therefore, these findings, published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal Science Advances, show how much this relative of modern birds had already diverged from cold-blooded dinosaurs like Triceratops and Stegosaurus.

"The temperature is about what I would have guessed — higher than a reptile or a slow mammal like a sloth, but lower than an avian," study co-author Robert Eagle, a geobiologist at UCLA, said in a statement.

Related stories

These findings have implications for how and where the T. rex might have lived. A warm-blooded T. rex would have been an energetic, active animal, chasing or scavenging food to fuel its fast metabolism rather than basking in the sun to gain energy, wrote the authors.

It also means that during the Cretaceous period, one of the warmest periods in Earth’s history, about 11-25 F (6-14 C) warmer than today, T. rex would have been able to survive in most of the North American continent, from what is now Mexico up to chilly climates where cold-blooded reptiles wouldn’t have survived. This helps explain why a tyrannosaur fossil has been found in the Kikak-Tegoseak Quarry in Alaska, although there is no trace of other reptiles like lizards, turtles or crocodiles from that period in the region.

The ability for T. rex to inhabit cooler, high latitudes also aligns with recent evidence that tyrannosaurs crossed the Bering Land Bridge between Asia and North America, write the authors.

How much do you know about the king of the dinosaurs? Test your knowledge with our T. rex quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaurs/scientists-finally-figured-out-the-temperature-of-t-rexs-blood-and-it-was-as-hot-as-ours - + - WEBQagzHhkRTNuKPqh5cba - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 22:02:25 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:51 +0000 - + t83VdL7zFMBpCYBeTqUBm7 + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000 - - - - + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Tyrannosaurus rex was a hottie with a body temperature similar to our own, according to a new analysis of their teeth.

The finding supports the idea that T. rex was a fast, energetic predator and scavenger, not an animal that basked in the sun to gain energy like most modern-day reptiles.

T. rex, which lived between about 68 million and 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period (143.1 million to 66 million years ago), was one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs that ever lived.

Previous studies have already suggested that T. rex and its relatives were warm blooded, but now scientists have estimated the dinosaur's body temperature for the first time by studying different isotopes, or forms, of the same chemical elements in the enamel of three T. rex teeth from specimens found in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.

Rare, heavy isotopes of carbon and oxygen bond together differently in growing tooth enamel depending on the temperature. The number of bonds formed between these rare isotopes is greater at cooler temperatures than it is at warmer temperatures, which means warm-blooded, or endothermic animals, that can regulate their own body temperature, have fewer of these chemical bonds in their teeth than cold-blooded, or ectothermic, animals, which rely on their environment for warmth.

One of the T. rex teeth used to measure the body temperature of T. rex, which involved using a dental drill to remove some enamel and dissolved the resulting powder to release carbon dioxide gas (Image credit: UCLA)

By measuring the bonds in carbon dioxide (CO2) given off when dissolving small samples from the T. rex teeth, Randon Flores, a geologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and his colleagues could estimate where on the scale of animal body temperatures T. rex sat.

They put the T. rex body temperature at 97.3 degrees Fahrenheit (36.3 degrees Celsius), comparable to that of a human or an elephant. Modern, cold-blooded reptiles tend to have lower body temperatures of about 82-86 F (28-30 C), while most birds — descendants from T. rex's branch of dinosaurs — tend to be much warmer at 104-109 F (40-43 C). Therefore, these findings, published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal Science Advances, show how much this relative of modern birds had already diverged from cold-blooded dinosaurs like Triceratops and Stegosaurus.

"The temperature is about what I would have guessed — higher than a reptile or a slow mammal like a sloth, but lower than an avian," study co-author Robert Eagle, a geobiologist at UCLA, said in a statement.

Related stories

These findings have implications for how and where the T. rex might have lived. A warm-blooded T. rex would have been an energetic, active animal, chasing or scavenging food to fuel its fast metabolism rather than basking in the sun to gain energy, wrote the authors.

It also means that during the Cretaceous period, one of the warmest periods in Earth’s history, about 11-25 F (6-14 C) warmer than today, T. rex would have been able to survive in most of the North American continent, from what is now Mexico up to chilly climates where cold-blooded reptiles wouldn’t have survived. This helps explain why a tyrannosaur fossil has been found in the Kikak-Tegoseak Quarry in Alaska, although there is no trace of other reptiles like lizards, turtles or crocodiles from that period in the region.

The ability for T. rex to inhabit cooler, high latitudes also aligns with recent evidence that tyrannosaurs crossed the Bering Land Bridge between Asia and North America, write the authors.

How much do you know about the king of the dinosaurs? Test your knowledge with our T. rex quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Kanzi the bonobo could play pretend — a trait thought unique to humans ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/kanzi-the-bonobo-could-play-pretend-a-trait-thought-unique-to-humans + <![CDATA[ Was there a 'before' the Big Bang? Jim Al-Khalili on the mind-bogglingness of time ]]> + Time keeps getting away from us. It has a fraught relationship with our subjective experience — sometimes slowing down or dragging on; and at other times speeding up, with years seeming to fly by as we get older. Our brain cells are even known to distort our sense of time when we're tired.

In physics, time gets even more complicated, incorporated into theories of relativity — the experience of the clock's ticking being relative to the observer and their place in space — and entropy, which gives time its unidirectional flow. Meanwhile quantum mechanics indicates time can move both forwards and backwards, at least inside quantum systems.

In this excerpt from "On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick" (Princeton University Press, 2026), author and theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili looks at the possibility that time did not begin with the Big Bang — but if this outburst was just another moment, what was there before?

There is an alternative cosmological theory to the one that says the Big Bang marked the beginning of time itself, which was then followed by a brief period of rapid inflation of space. The alternative is known as eternal inflation. In this scenario, our universe was born as a small bubble in an infinite space that has been undergoing inflation forever.

So, rather than time beginning with our Big Bang, we should regard the Big Bang as an event that took place at some moment in time, in which our region of this infinite space suddenly stopped inflating and began instead to expand at a more sedate pace.

So instead of a brief period of inflation happening just after the Big Bang, in the eternal inflation theory it is the other way around, with the Big Bang marking the end of inflation in our part of space, creating our bubble universe outside of which inflation continues. The theory predicts there will be other big bangs happening elsewhere that give rise to other universes — possibly an infinite number of them — all forever separated from each other, and all being driven apart by the ever-expanding, rapidly inflating space outside of them. The totality of this infinite space is referred to as the multiverse, to distinguish it from the individual bubble universes.

Some physicists argue that such an idea falls outside of proper science, since we do not have a way of testing it. There are two other ideas worth mentioning on the matter of whether the Big Bang marked the beginning of time or not, both of which are alternatives to inflation theory. The first is that our universe is part of a repeating process called conformal cyclic cosmology'.

This idea, proposed by Roger Penrose, suggests that our universe is going through an infinite series of lives, or epochs, each of which starts with a big bang and ends with a universe in thermal equilibrium, filled only with evenly spread-out thermal radiation. The idea here is not, as you might expect, that the universe reaches some maximum expansion before collapsing down to a 'Big Crunch' that then marks the Big Bang of the next epoch, but rather because of a subtle geometrical idea called 'conformal mapping' that connects up the very dif­ferent end of one universe (cold and spread-out) with the birth of the next (hot and dense).

a universe through a kaleidoscope

Other suggestions for a pre-Big Bang time include a mirror universe, and one that cycles endlessly through expansion and contraction. (Image credit: Curly_photo/Getty Images)

I will not say any more about this theory, in particular since it has been argued that it suffers from several flaws, such as the problem of conservation of information (similar to the so-called black hole information paradox) and the difficulty of reconciling the high entropy at the end of the old epoch with the low entropy of the new epoch.

A related hypothesis, which I admit I find aesthetically rather appealing, is known as the ekpyrotic universe model. The name is based on the Greek word ekpyrosis (ἐκπύρωσι), meaning 'conflagration', which refers to a cosmological model proposed by the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece in which the universe cycles endlessly through fiery birth, expansion, and cooling, followed by contraction, reheating, and rebirth.

The name 'ekpyrotic universe' was devised by one of the modern theory's originators, Paul Steinhardt. The idea comes out of the highly mathematical world of string theory. Basically, the whole of our three-dimensional space (which as we know is really a part of 4D spacetime) forms what is called a 3D brane (a higher-dimensional generalisation of a 2D membrane, or sheet). This 3D brane of ours is floating in a higher-dimensional (4D) space, and the Big Bang is when it collided with a neighbouring brane (in a sense this would be another universe). This collision creates tremendous heat and radiation (the Big Bang) and sets off the expansion of our space.

At the same time, it is drifting away from the other brane that it collided with, but will eventually reach maximum separation from it before they are pulled back together, colliding again in a new Big Bang. Here I simply wish to stress that if this theory is right then there may not have been a beginning of time, and certainly not at the Big Bang.

What if there were a mirror universe on the other temporal side of the Big Bang, evolving in a direction we would consider to be towards the past?

Another cosmological model, which also does away with the need for inflation, as well as suggesting that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time, has been proposed by another of the originators of the ekpyrotic universe idea, Neil Turok. But this idea, known as the 'mirror universe' theory, is rather dif­ferent. It's a nice idea, and it certainly solves Loschmidt's paradox regarding the conflict between time symmetry and the second law of thermodynamics. Due to the time-symmetric underlying fundamental equations of physics, starting a system off at any arbitrary moment means that its entropy should increase equally into the past as it does into the future.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

But this just doesn't make sense. If the system at all times before our chosen arbitrary moment has higher entropy, then starting from any of those earlier times should see the system decrease in entropy in order to reach its state at the original arbitrary moment. Therefore, it cannot be arbitrary; the system had to have been in a specially prepared state at that moment, the moment of the Big Bang. There would be no increase in entropy going backwards in time if that is when time started.

But what if there were a mirror universe on the other temporal side of the Big Bang, evolving in a direction we would consider to be towards the past? This is precisely what Turok is suggesting. What is neat (or convenient, depending on how much you like this theory) is that both sides of the Big Bang are completely separated from each other, with each seeing time pointing in the direction of increasing entropy. If such a mirror universe exists and contains intelligent life that has also hit upon the mirror universe idea, then they would think that our side was the one before the Big Bang in the same way we think that theirs is. As well as doing away with inflation, this idea also conveniently explains why there is more matter than antimatter in our universe because, guess what, the mirror universe would have it the other way round: What they call normal matter is our antimatter.

How seriously should we take these cosmological theories? Are they even proper science? Their proponents know they require some sort of empirical evidence to support their hypotheses, such as some imprint of a reality before the Big Bang frozen in our cosmic microwave background. For without observational evidence, these ideas will remain just theoretical curiosities.

Excerpted from On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick © 2026 by Jim Al-Khalili. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

On Time: the Physics That Makes the Universe Tick
Princeton University Press
On Time: the Physics That Makes the Universe Tick

In this mind-altering book, Jim Al-Khalili tackles the enduring problems of time head-on, carefully examining them across the three central pillars of physics—quantum mechanics, general relativity, and thermodynamics.

Al-Khalili makes the persuasive case that time is real, not illusory, and that a master arrow of time is not merely a trick of our senses but is rather a fundamental feature of reality that was baked into the structure of our universe from the very beginning.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/was-there-a-before-the-big-bang-jim-al-khalili-on-the-mind-bogglingness-of-time - + - t8aomqMx2DWV4PTSGmsNMF - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:00:00 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:50 +0000 - - - - - - + Ec3JtuBZboYQUMhoJJDTVe + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:56:08 +0000 Wed, 16 Sep 2026 19:31:09 +0000 + + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +

Time keeps getting away from us. It has a fraught relationship with our subjective experience — sometimes slowing down or dragging on; and at other times speeding up, with years seeming to fly by as we get older. Our brain cells are even known to distort our sense of time when we're tired.

In physics, time gets even more complicated, incorporated into theories of relativity — the experience of the clock's ticking being relative to the observer and their place in space — and entropy, which gives time its unidirectional flow. Meanwhile quantum mechanics indicates time can move both forwards and backwards, at least inside quantum systems.

In this excerpt from "On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick" (Princeton University Press, 2026), author and theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili looks at the possibility that time did not begin with the Big Bang — but if this outburst was just another moment, what was there before?

There is an alternative cosmological theory to the one that says the Big Bang marked the beginning of time itself, which was then followed by a brief period of rapid inflation of space. The alternative is known as eternal inflation. In this scenario, our universe was born as a small bubble in an infinite space that has been undergoing inflation forever.

So, rather than time beginning with our Big Bang, we should regard the Big Bang as an event that took place at some moment in time, in which our region of this infinite space suddenly stopped inflating and began instead to expand at a more sedate pace.

So instead of a brief period of inflation happening just after the Big Bang, in the eternal inflation theory it is the other way around, with the Big Bang marking the end of inflation in our part of space, creating our bubble universe outside of which inflation continues. The theory predicts there will be other big bangs happening elsewhere that give rise to other universes — possibly an infinite number of them — all forever separated from each other, and all being driven apart by the ever-expanding, rapidly inflating space outside of them. The totality of this infinite space is referred to as the multiverse, to distinguish it from the individual bubble universes.

Some physicists argue that such an idea falls outside of proper science, since we do not have a way of testing it. There are two other ideas worth mentioning on the matter of whether the Big Bang marked the beginning of time or not, both of which are alternatives to inflation theory. The first is that our universe is part of a repeating process called conformal cyclic cosmology'.

This idea, proposed by Roger Penrose, suggests that our universe is going through an infinite series of lives, or epochs, each of which starts with a big bang and ends with a universe in thermal equilibrium, filled only with evenly spread-out thermal radiation. The idea here is not, as you might expect, that the universe reaches some maximum expansion before collapsing down to a 'Big Crunch' that then marks the Big Bang of the next epoch, but rather because of a subtle geometrical idea called 'conformal mapping' that connects up the very dif­ferent end of one universe (cold and spread-out) with the birth of the next (hot and dense).

a universe through a kaleidoscope

Other suggestions for a pre-Big Bang time include a mirror universe, and one that cycles endlessly through expansion and contraction. (Image credit: Curly_photo/Getty Images)

I will not say any more about this theory, in particular since it has been argued that it suffers from several flaws, such as the problem of conservation of information (similar to the so-called black hole information paradox) and the difficulty of reconciling the high entropy at the end of the old epoch with the low entropy of the new epoch.

A related hypothesis, which I admit I find aesthetically rather appealing, is known as the ekpyrotic universe model. The name is based on the Greek word ekpyrosis (ἐκπύρωσι), meaning 'conflagration', which refers to a cosmological model proposed by the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece in which the universe cycles endlessly through fiery birth, expansion, and cooling, followed by contraction, reheating, and rebirth.

The name 'ekpyrotic universe' was devised by one of the modern theory's originators, Paul Steinhardt. The idea comes out of the highly mathematical world of string theory. Basically, the whole of our three-dimensional space (which as we know is really a part of 4D spacetime) forms what is called a 3D brane (a higher-dimensional generalisation of a 2D membrane, or sheet). This 3D brane of ours is floating in a higher-dimensional (4D) space, and the Big Bang is when it collided with a neighbouring brane (in a sense this would be another universe). This collision creates tremendous heat and radiation (the Big Bang) and sets off the expansion of our space.

At the same time, it is drifting away from the other brane that it collided with, but will eventually reach maximum separation from it before they are pulled back together, colliding again in a new Big Bang. Here I simply wish to stress that if this theory is right then there may not have been a beginning of time, and certainly not at the Big Bang.

What if there were a mirror universe on the other temporal side of the Big Bang, evolving in a direction we would consider to be towards the past?

Another cosmological model, which also does away with the need for inflation, as well as suggesting that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time, has been proposed by another of the originators of the ekpyrotic universe idea, Neil Turok. But this idea, known as the 'mirror universe' theory, is rather dif­ferent. It's a nice idea, and it certainly solves Loschmidt's paradox regarding the conflict between time symmetry and the second law of thermodynamics. Due to the time-symmetric underlying fundamental equations of physics, starting a system off at any arbitrary moment means that its entropy should increase equally into the past as it does into the future.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

But this just doesn't make sense. If the system at all times before our chosen arbitrary moment has higher entropy, then starting from any of those earlier times should see the system decrease in entropy in order to reach its state at the original arbitrary moment. Therefore, it cannot be arbitrary; the system had to have been in a specially prepared state at that moment, the moment of the Big Bang. There would be no increase in entropy going backwards in time if that is when time started.

But what if there were a mirror universe on the other temporal side of the Big Bang, evolving in a direction we would consider to be towards the past? This is precisely what Turok is suggesting. What is neat (or convenient, depending on how much you like this theory) is that both sides of the Big Bang are completely separated from each other, with each seeing time pointing in the direction of increasing entropy. If such a mirror universe exists and contains intelligent life that has also hit upon the mirror universe idea, then they would think that our side was the one before the Big Bang in the same way we think that theirs is. As well as doing away with inflation, this idea also conveniently explains why there is more matter than antimatter in our universe because, guess what, the mirror universe would have it the other way round: What they call normal matter is our antimatter.

How seriously should we take these cosmological theories? Are they even proper science? Their proponents know they require some sort of empirical evidence to support their hypotheses, such as some imprint of a reality before the Big Bang frozen in our cosmic microwave background. For without observational evidence, these ideas will remain just theoretical curiosities.

Excerpted from On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick © 2026 by Jim Al-Khalili. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

On Time: the Physics That Makes the Universe Tick
Princeton University Press
On Time: the Physics That Makes the Universe Tick

In this mind-altering book, Jim Al-Khalili tackles the enduring problems of time head-on, carefully examining them across the three central pillars of physics—quantum mechanics, general relativity, and thermodynamics.

Al-Khalili makes the persuasive case that time is real, not illusory, and that a master arrow of time is not merely a trick of our senses but is rather a fundamental feature of reality that was baked into the structure of our universe from the very beginning.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Black hole outburst named 'Jetty McJetface' is one of the most energetic objects in the universe ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/black-holes/black-hole-outburst-jetty-mcjetface-is-one-of-the-most-energetic-objects-in-the-universe-and-only-growing-brighter + <![CDATA[ Scientists shrank mice's brains and replaced the missing tissue with human 'organoids' ]]> + In a new study, scientists reared lab mice that were missing sections of their brains and then replaced the missing tissue with human cells.

The experiment represents a step forward in the study of human brain organoids ‪—‬ tiny models of the human brain grown from stem cells. In the long run, scientists aim to use organoids to better understand how the brain develops and how its structure and function change in the context of disease.

"It is definitely an advance in the field," said Dr. H. Isaac Chen, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Chen was not involved in the current study but has conducted experiments transplanting human brain organoids into rodents' heads.

Organoids offer a window into early brain development that's impossible to observe closely in humans, namely because it unfolds inside developing fetuses. Although organoids are not perfect re-creations of full-size human brains, scientists think organoids are useful models for studying the developing brain in both health and disease.

The model in the new study "certainly creates some pretty interesting options in terms of modeling human neurodevelopment and various types of neurodevelopmental disorders," Chen said. "If you're looking for a model that really allows you to look at larger areas of human neural tissue from a cellular, molecular perspective, I think there's a lot that this model has to offer."

A mouse's brain shown from the top, with one portion highlighted green, orange and yellow
S. Pasca lab, Stanford University
A side view of a mouse's brain with nerve fibers labeled in bright colors
S. Pasca lab, Stanford University
Another view of a mouse's brain with nerve fibers labeled in bright colors
S. Pasca lab, Stanford University

Making space for human cells

Often, brain organoids are grown outside living organisms, either in lab dishes or devices that keep these "minibrains" suspended in a solution. Multiple organoids representing different parts of the brain, or even different people's brains, can also be brought together to form more-complex structures.

Why, then, are some scientists growing human organoids inside mice? One reason is that there's a secret sauce inside living organisms that helps organoids mature better in animals than they do in lab dishes. In the body (in vivo), there are mysterious signals that help direct neurons' development and organization, and these signals are missing in lab dishes (in vitro).

"There are some cues that are present in vivo that are really important, and we simply don't know what to add in, in vitro," said study co-author Dr. Sergiu Pașca, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The team demonstrated this phenomenon by transplanting organoids into lab rats in a study published in 2022; the transplanted organoids grew larger, formed better connections and were more active than organoids grown in dishes.

But transplanting human brain cells into rodents comes with different challenges. One is that human brains mature at a slower rate than rodent brains do. "Even when they're put in an animal, in a mouse or in a rat, they will still develop about 20 times slower than the mouse or the rat," Pașca told Live Science.

The host's brain cells quickly grow and form new connections, while the human cells lag behind and get outcompeted, Pașca explained. This limits the amount of space that the human cells can take up. As neurons mature, they become myelinated, meaning they gain fatty insulation that helps them communicate more efficiently. The rodent neurons become myelinated more quickly than the human cells do, and that fat creates a physical barrier that the human cells struggle to penetrate, Pașca said.

In their study, described Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal Nature, Pașca and colleagues aimed to give the human neurons a leg up. They couldn't solve the issue of human cells maturing slowly, but they could lend the cells extra space to grow in.

Through years of work, they developed a genetically modified mouse that develops only 2% of its cerebral cortex. The majority of its hippocampus — a major memory center in the brain — is also missing. Within a few days of the mouse's birth, the team transplants human neural tissue into that vacant space, and about 90% of the time, that human tissue integrates successfully and starts to grow, Pașca said.

A close up of a series of small brains against a black surface.

The brains of normal lab mice look like the brain on the left, whereas the center brain is missing 98% of its cortex and hippocampus. The brain on the right has human cortical tissue added to it. (Here, "XCX" is short for "xenocortical," and "xeno" references the transfer of tissues from one species to another.) (Image credit: Pasca Lab/Stanford University)

"We just took cortical organoids, about four of them, and transferred them with a syringe into that vacant space," he said. "That's it. They go in there, they graft, and within a few weeks, they start to grow. And then within a few months, they've taken most of that volume."

In the weeks following the transplantation procedure, the human brain cells in the mice's heads grew, formed connections and extended projections into the underlying mouse tissue. The human tissue didn't organize itself into distinct layers as it normally would inside a human's head, but it included many cell types that are typically seen in the human cerebral cortex.

Future of the field

The researchers compared the mice imbued with brain organoids with mice that were missing the same amount of brain tissue but didn't get organoids. They also compared both groups to unmodified lab mice.

Perhaps surprisingly, the mice missing large chunks of their brains still functioned fairly well. "You look at them, and you can't really honestly tell," Pașca said. Upon closer inspection, though, the mice had subtle deficits in their fine-motor skills, working memory and socialization, he noted.

"From our perspective as humans, so much of what we do day to day depends on the cortex," Chen noted. But in a mouse, the cortex makes up a minority of the overall brain, and various studies have suggested that the animals can get by without it, he said. "I don't think the transplantation process itself is significantly hurting the animal," he added.

It would be much more problematic if this was to happen in a species that has a larger brain and is closer to humans evolutionarily.

Dr. Sergiu Pașca, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University

In the future, the ability to compare these three sets of mice — with organoids, without organoids, and unmodified — could help scientists tease apart how the human tissue is contributing to a given experimental result. Pașca envisions that the approach will be useful for studying the effects of insults to the brain, such as hypoxia (low oxygen) and exposure to toxins or drugs in the womb. Additionally, the genetics of the human organoids could be tweaked to see how those changes affect the brain's development, structure and function. That could be useful for studying cerebral palsy or autism, he suggested.

Chen expects that this new approach will be useful for studying aspects of early brain development at the molecular and cellular levels. The new model incorporates a larger volume of human tissue than models have done in the past, and that's an additional advantage. The human tissue doesn't organize itself into layers or lobes as you'd see in a real human brain, he noted, but he thinks there's still a lot that can be learned from it.

From an ethical standpoint, Pașca consulted with experts at Stanford and an external ethics committee regarding the welfare of the animals used in the study. Studies that involve putting human brain tissue into animals also raise questions about whether that added tissue could grant the animals new cognitive abilities — make them more human-like, in essence. The ethics committee fielded these concerns as well.

Related stories

"We have not seen emergence of any new properties," Pașca noted. "It's not surprising because we're still at a very early stage of development." They grew the organoids for only six months, so the human organoids were roughly as developed as a 6-month-old fetus's brain tissue.

If the organoids matured to be more human-like — developing layers and lobes — that might present more of a concern. But both Pașca and Chen said that type of development might be hard to recreate in a mouse anyway.

Chen argued that the sheer size of the human brain contributes to its complexity, and it also contains specialized regions that work together to execute different tasks. A mouse's head cannot support the scale of a human brain, and at this point, organoids don't develop the same organization and specialization that we see in people, he said.

"It would be much more problematic if this was to happen in a species that has a larger brain and is closer to humans evolutionarily," Pașca argued. Pigs and nonhuman primates, such as monkeys, would be examples. Especially in regard to transplanting human organoids into monkeys, "that would be an experiment that I don't see is justified at this point," Pașca said.

See how much you know about the most complex organ in the human body with our brain quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/scientists-shrank-mices-brains-and-replaced-the-missing-tissue-with-human-organoids - + - ZxzY8M78hbPCVHu3k9Etv3 - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 18:05:08 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:51 +0000 - - - - - - - + DsfUYqD9PxtDYNSPDCpQhL + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000 Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:56:34 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

In a new study, scientists reared lab mice that were missing sections of their brains and then replaced the missing tissue with human cells.

The experiment represents a step forward in the study of human brain organoids ‪—‬ tiny models of the human brain grown from stem cells. In the long run, scientists aim to use organoids to better understand how the brain develops and how its structure and function change in the context of disease.

"It is definitely an advance in the field," said Dr. H. Isaac Chen, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Chen was not involved in the current study but has conducted experiments transplanting human brain organoids into rodents' heads.

Organoids offer a window into early brain development that's impossible to observe closely in humans, namely because it unfolds inside developing fetuses. Although organoids are not perfect re-creations of full-size human brains, scientists think organoids are useful models for studying the developing brain in both health and disease.

The model in the new study "certainly creates some pretty interesting options in terms of modeling human neurodevelopment and various types of neurodevelopmental disorders," Chen said. "If you're looking for a model that really allows you to look at larger areas of human neural tissue from a cellular, molecular perspective, I think there's a lot that this model has to offer."

A mouse's brain shown from the top, with one portion highlighted green, orange and yellow
S. Pasca lab, Stanford University
A side view of a mouse's brain with nerve fibers labeled in bright colors
S. Pasca lab, Stanford University
Another view of a mouse's brain with nerve fibers labeled in bright colors
S. Pasca lab, Stanford University

Making space for human cells

Often, brain organoids are grown outside living organisms, either in lab dishes or devices that keep these "minibrains" suspended in a solution. Multiple organoids representing different parts of the brain, or even different people's brains, can also be brought together to form more-complex structures.

Why, then, are some scientists growing human organoids inside mice? One reason is that there's a secret sauce inside living organisms that helps organoids mature better in animals than they do in lab dishes. In the body (in vivo), there are mysterious signals that help direct neurons' development and organization, and these signals are missing in lab dishes (in vitro).

"There are some cues that are present in vivo that are really important, and we simply don't know what to add in, in vitro," said study co-author Dr. Sergiu Pașca, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The team demonstrated this phenomenon by transplanting organoids into lab rats in a study published in 2022; the transplanted organoids grew larger, formed better connections and were more active than organoids grown in dishes.

But transplanting human brain cells into rodents comes with different challenges. One is that human brains mature at a slower rate than rodent brains do. "Even when they're put in an animal, in a mouse or in a rat, they will still develop about 20 times slower than the mouse or the rat," Pașca told Live Science.

The host's brain cells quickly grow and form new connections, while the human cells lag behind and get outcompeted, Pașca explained. This limits the amount of space that the human cells can take up. As neurons mature, they become myelinated, meaning they gain fatty insulation that helps them communicate more efficiently. The rodent neurons become myelinated more quickly than the human cells do, and that fat creates a physical barrier that the human cells struggle to penetrate, Pașca said.

In their study, described Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal Nature, Pașca and colleagues aimed to give the human neurons a leg up. They couldn't solve the issue of human cells maturing slowly, but they could lend the cells extra space to grow in.

Through years of work, they developed a genetically modified mouse that develops only 2% of its cerebral cortex. The majority of its hippocampus — a major memory center in the brain — is also missing. Within a few days of the mouse's birth, the team transplants human neural tissue into that vacant space, and about 90% of the time, that human tissue integrates successfully and starts to grow, Pașca said.

A close up of a series of small brains against a black surface.

The brains of normal lab mice look like the brain on the left, whereas the center brain is missing 98% of its cortex and hippocampus. The brain on the right has human cortical tissue added to it. (Here, "XCX" is short for "xenocortical," and "xeno" references the transfer of tissues from one species to another.) (Image credit: Pasca Lab/Stanford University)

"We just took cortical organoids, about four of them, and transferred them with a syringe into that vacant space," he said. "That's it. They go in there, they graft, and within a few weeks, they start to grow. And then within a few months, they've taken most of that volume."

In the weeks following the transplantation procedure, the human brain cells in the mice's heads grew, formed connections and extended projections into the underlying mouse tissue. The human tissue didn't organize itself into distinct layers as it normally would inside a human's head, but it included many cell types that are typically seen in the human cerebral cortex.

Future of the field

The researchers compared the mice imbued with brain organoids with mice that were missing the same amount of brain tissue but didn't get organoids. They also compared both groups to unmodified lab mice.

Perhaps surprisingly, the mice missing large chunks of their brains still functioned fairly well. "You look at them, and you can't really honestly tell," Pașca said. Upon closer inspection, though, the mice had subtle deficits in their fine-motor skills, working memory and socialization, he noted.

"From our perspective as humans, so much of what we do day to day depends on the cortex," Chen noted. But in a mouse, the cortex makes up a minority of the overall brain, and various studies have suggested that the animals can get by without it, he said. "I don't think the transplantation process itself is significantly hurting the animal," he added.

It would be much more problematic if this was to happen in a species that has a larger brain and is closer to humans evolutionarily.

Dr. Sergiu Pașca, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University

In the future, the ability to compare these three sets of mice — with organoids, without organoids, and unmodified — could help scientists tease apart how the human tissue is contributing to a given experimental result. Pașca envisions that the approach will be useful for studying the effects of insults to the brain, such as hypoxia (low oxygen) and exposure to toxins or drugs in the womb. Additionally, the genetics of the human organoids could be tweaked to see how those changes affect the brain's development, structure and function. That could be useful for studying cerebral palsy or autism, he suggested.

Chen expects that this new approach will be useful for studying aspects of early brain development at the molecular and cellular levels. The new model incorporates a larger volume of human tissue than models have done in the past, and that's an additional advantage. The human tissue doesn't organize itself into layers or lobes as you'd see in a real human brain, he noted, but he thinks there's still a lot that can be learned from it.

From an ethical standpoint, Pașca consulted with experts at Stanford and an external ethics committee regarding the welfare of the animals used in the study. Studies that involve putting human brain tissue into animals also raise questions about whether that added tissue could grant the animals new cognitive abilities — make them more human-like, in essence. The ethics committee fielded these concerns as well.

Related stories

"We have not seen emergence of any new properties," Pașca noted. "It's not surprising because we're still at a very early stage of development." They grew the organoids for only six months, so the human organoids were roughly as developed as a 6-month-old fetus's brain tissue.

If the organoids matured to be more human-like — developing layers and lobes — that might present more of a concern. But both Pașca and Chen said that type of development might be hard to recreate in a mouse anyway.

Chen argued that the sheer size of the human brain contributes to its complexity, and it also contains specialized regions that work together to execute different tasks. A mouse's head cannot support the scale of a human brain, and at this point, organoids don't develop the same organization and specialization that we see in people, he said.

"It would be much more problematic if this was to happen in a species that has a larger brain and is closer to humans evolutionarily," Pașca argued. Pigs and nonhuman primates, such as monkeys, would be examples. Especially in regard to transplanting human organoids into monkeys, "that would be an experiment that I don't see is justified at this point," Pașca said.

See how much you know about the most complex organ in the human body with our brain quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Martian meteorite that fell to Earth is full of ancient water, new scans reveal ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/martian-meteorite-that-fell-to-earth-is-full-of-ancient-water-new-scans-reveal + <![CDATA[ 'It is extremely rare to witness': Scientists record humpback whale mom grieving her stillborn calf in first-of-its-kind footage ]]> + In an extraordinary first-of-its-kind video, researchers have documented a humpback whale mom grieving her stillborn calf.

The footage was recorded off the coast of southeastern Australia in July 2025, according to a study published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal Discover Animals. In the clip, a female humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) hovers above her baby's motionless body on the seafloor and tries to make eye contact with the newborn, as if to check for signs of life.

"It is extremely rare to witness," study first author Olaf Meynecke, a marine ecologist at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science in an email. "Only about 20 births of humpback whales have been observed to date and described in literature," none of which involved a stillborn calf.

Unlike the babies of toothed whales and porpoises, newborn humpback whales don't have enough blubber to float, so they sink without the help of an adult whale. This might partly explain why scientists had not witnessed a stillbirth in this species until now, Meynecke said, as the lifeless body sinks to the seabed immediately after birth and is almost impossible to spot from a distance.

The whale mom repeatedly tried to make eye contact with her calf, even though researchers think she was aware it died during birth. (Image credit: Andy Mulville)

The video was taken after study co-author Andrew Mulville, who was on a private boat that morning, noticed two adult humpback whales milling about at the surface of the water. One of the whales adopted a vertical position with its tail pointing up. Moments later, Mulville saw the remains of an amniotic membrane, the inner layer of the placental bag that envelops a fetus, floating on the water.

The whale had obviously just given birth, but there was no sign of the calf. So Mulville and others on the boat followed the female underwater with a GoPro camera. They found the calf dead on the seafloor, while the mother displayed what the study authors interpreted as "postmortem attentive behavior," or grieving.

"She was repeatedly diving down for short times and swimming next to the calf, then resting next to it on the floor for about a minute, even moving the pectoral fin over the calf, then diving up again," Meynecke said. This behavior lasted for at least 90 minutes and possibly days, although the researchers left the scene after about two hours of observation.

The mother did not try to bring the calf's body to the surface, possibly because she realized that it had died during birth. This is different from the postmortem attentive behavior of toothed whales, which researchers have previously seen pushing stillborn babies above the water, according to the study.

The other adult whale on the scene was an "escort" supporting the pregnant female as she prepared to give birth, Meynecke said. Based on the escort's size and appearance, it was likely a female of a similar age to the mom, but the researchers did not confirm this. Male and female escorts are common in humpback whales; they usually travel with females and their calves during migration and assist females during pregnancy.

RELATED STORIES

Grieving behavior suggests that humpback whales have an inherent, strong maternal attachment to their calves. Grief is difficult to demonstrate due to the lack of physiological or neurological measurements. However, the whale mom sought close proximity with her calf during the observation time, and the adult whales were spotted swimming in the area for the next two days, suggesting they were emotionally invested in the death, according to the study.

"It provides a rare window into the behavioural response of baleen [filter-feeding] whales toward a deceased member of their species but also in this case of a mother toward her calf," Meynecke said. "It provides important insight into the complex behaviours of the species and aligns with other observations of care taking, assisting distressed whales or even protecting other species from predators."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/animals/whales/it-is-extremely-rare-to-witness-scientists-record-humpback-whale-mom-grieving-her-stillborn-calf-in-first-of-its-kind-footage - + - k4R9CvYrWjsjmpPm6PNVZS - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:06:33 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:06:34 +0000 - - - - - - - - + xvgZYFJeJWX7EtFBFPKEmW + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:44:47 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

In an extraordinary first-of-its-kind video, researchers have documented a humpback whale mom grieving her stillborn calf.

The footage was recorded off the coast of southeastern Australia in July 2025, according to a study published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal Discover Animals. In the clip, a female humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) hovers above her baby's motionless body on the seafloor and tries to make eye contact with the newborn, as if to check for signs of life.

"It is extremely rare to witness," study first author Olaf Meynecke, a marine ecologist at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science in an email. "Only about 20 births of humpback whales have been observed to date and described in literature," none of which involved a stillborn calf.

Unlike the babies of toothed whales and porpoises, newborn humpback whales don't have enough blubber to float, so they sink without the help of an adult whale. This might partly explain why scientists had not witnessed a stillbirth in this species until now, Meynecke said, as the lifeless body sinks to the seabed immediately after birth and is almost impossible to spot from a distance.

The whale mom repeatedly tried to make eye contact with her calf, even though researchers think she was aware it died during birth. (Image credit: Andy Mulville)

The video was taken after study co-author Andrew Mulville, who was on a private boat that morning, noticed two adult humpback whales milling about at the surface of the water. One of the whales adopted a vertical position with its tail pointing up. Moments later, Mulville saw the remains of an amniotic membrane, the inner layer of the placental bag that envelops a fetus, floating on the water.

The whale had obviously just given birth, but there was no sign of the calf. So Mulville and others on the boat followed the female underwater with a GoPro camera. They found the calf dead on the seafloor, while the mother displayed what the study authors interpreted as "postmortem attentive behavior," or grieving.

"She was repeatedly diving down for short times and swimming next to the calf, then resting next to it on the floor for about a minute, even moving the pectoral fin over the calf, then diving up again," Meynecke said. This behavior lasted for at least 90 minutes and possibly days, although the researchers left the scene after about two hours of observation.

The mother did not try to bring the calf's body to the surface, possibly because she realized that it had died during birth. This is different from the postmortem attentive behavior of toothed whales, which researchers have previously seen pushing stillborn babies above the water, according to the study.

The other adult whale on the scene was an "escort" supporting the pregnant female as she prepared to give birth, Meynecke said. Based on the escort's size and appearance, it was likely a female of a similar age to the mom, but the researchers did not confirm this. Male and female escorts are common in humpback whales; they usually travel with females and their calves during migration and assist females during pregnancy.

RELATED STORIES

Grieving behavior suggests that humpback whales have an inherent, strong maternal attachment to their calves. Grief is difficult to demonstrate due to the lack of physiological or neurological measurements. However, the whale mom sought close proximity with her calf during the observation time, and the adult whales were spotted swimming in the area for the next two days, suggesting they were emotionally invested in the death, according to the study.

"It provides a rare window into the behavioural response of baleen [filter-feeding] whales toward a deceased member of their species but also in this case of a mother toward her calf," Meynecke said. "It provides important insight into the complex behaviours of the species and aligns with other observations of care taking, assisting distressed whales or even protecting other species from predators."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 7,500-year-old deer skull headdress discovered in Germany indicates hunter-gatherers shared sacred items and ideas with region's first farmers ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/7-500-year-old-deer-skull-headdress-discovered-in-germany-indicates-hunter-gatherers-shared-sacred-items-and-ideas-with-regions-first-farmers + <![CDATA[ Diagnostic dilemma: A man's sudden fainting episodes landed him in the hospital — and a hair dye was to blame ]]> + The patient: A 61-year-old man in India

The symptoms: The man went to an emergency department after fainting. He had felt nauseous just before the episode, which lasted about three minutes and was followed by a second fainting episode lasting about two minutes. He also had swelling around one eye.

His family told doctors that he hadn't shown any jerking movements, loss of bladder control or subsequent grogginess, which would have been telltale signs of a seizure.

What happened next: Because the man had fainted twice and had a history of heart disease, doctors first looked for problems affecting his brain and heart. An MRI of his brain, used to look for structural abnormalities that could explain the fainting, and an electroencephalogram (EEG), which records the brain's electrical activity, did not reveal a cause.

The man had persistently low blood pressure, the doctors observed, and this led them to move him to the intensive care unit. There, doctors carried out tests for infections and heart attack, but all came back negative.

Meanwhile, the swelling around one of his eyes spread to both eyes and then across his face, while his blood pressure continued to fall despite treatment with intravenous fluids.

The doctors probed further into the man's medical history and activities before the fainting episodes. They learned that he had applied an artificial hair dye two days before he became ill. Soon afterward, he developed itching on his scalp, neck and face. He self-treated with the allergy medicine cetirizine, an antihistamine, for two days. He also reported spending two to three hours outdoors in the sun each day after he'd applied the hair dye.

The diagnosis: Based on the man's recent use of hair dye, the itching that followed, his rapidly worsening facial swelling and his persistently low blood pressure, doctors concluded that he was experiencing anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that can affect the whole body. The reaction can be life-threatening if left untreated.

three doctors in white coats and scrubs quickly pushing a patient on a bed down a hall of an emergency department

Anaphylaxis is a medical emergency and can be life-threatening. (Image credit: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The treatment: Doctors treated the man with epinephrine (also called adrenaline), a hormonal medication that rapidly reverses the effects of anaphylaxis. They also gave him antihistamines and steroids to help bring the allergic reaction under control, along with intravenous fluids to raise his blood pressure.

However, the patient's blood pressure remained dangerously low, so doctors continued giving him epinephrine through an intravenous drip for about 16 hours. Over the next three days of treatment, his blood pressure stabilized and the swelling in his face gradually subsided.

He was transferred to a general ward and treated there for another five days before being discharged. He was advised that he could have a similar reaction in the future and referred to a dermatologist.

What makes the case unique: Most allergic reactions to hair dye remain limited to the skin, causing itching, redness and swelling where the dye has touched it. Severe reactions affecting the whole body are uncommon, the man's doctors wrote in a report of the case.

Other dilemmas

The itching the man noticed shortly after applying the dye was likely an early, mild allergic reaction, his doctors wrote. That reaction later progressed to a much more severe one, they suggested, raising the possibility of a "biphasic" allergic reaction, an uncommon pattern seen in about 5% of patients with anaphylaxis. However, this remains only a possible explanation.

The doctors also noted that the man's prolonged sun exposure after he applied the dye may have intensified the reaction; they cited previous research that ultraviolet light can enhance the allergy-triggering effects of para-phenylenediamine, a common ingredient in hair dyes. In the report, the doctors did not identify the exact hair dye ingredient that triggered the reaction in this instance.

The case highlights the importance of asking about recent use of products such as hair dye when doctors evaluate patients with otherwise unexplained fainting, facial swelling or shock, the medical team concluded.

For more intriguing medical cases, check out our Diagnostic Dilemma archives.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Can you guess the diagnosis in these strange medical cases? Find out with our diagnostic dilemma quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/immune-system/diagnostic-dilemma-a-mans-sudden-fainting-episodes-landed-him-in-the-hospital-and-a-hair-dye-was-to-blame - + - QAS2EqDhkUha9sVbWseUuS - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:43:15 +0000 - - - - - + xCFXrT8oCHtB8AQpeyhRvj + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The patient: A 61-year-old man in India

The symptoms: The man went to an emergency department after fainting. He had felt nauseous just before the episode, which lasted about three minutes and was followed by a second fainting episode lasting about two minutes. He also had swelling around one eye.

His family told doctors that he hadn't shown any jerking movements, loss of bladder control or subsequent grogginess, which would have been telltale signs of a seizure.

What happened next: Because the man had fainted twice and had a history of heart disease, doctors first looked for problems affecting his brain and heart. An MRI of his brain, used to look for structural abnormalities that could explain the fainting, and an electroencephalogram (EEG), which records the brain's electrical activity, did not reveal a cause.

The man had persistently low blood pressure, the doctors observed, and this led them to move him to the intensive care unit. There, doctors carried out tests for infections and heart attack, but all came back negative.

Meanwhile, the swelling around one of his eyes spread to both eyes and then across his face, while his blood pressure continued to fall despite treatment with intravenous fluids.

The doctors probed further into the man's medical history and activities before the fainting episodes. They learned that he had applied an artificial hair dye two days before he became ill. Soon afterward, he developed itching on his scalp, neck and face. He self-treated with the allergy medicine cetirizine, an antihistamine, for two days. He also reported spending two to three hours outdoors in the sun each day after he'd applied the hair dye.

The diagnosis: Based on the man's recent use of hair dye, the itching that followed, his rapidly worsening facial swelling and his persistently low blood pressure, doctors concluded that he was experiencing anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that can affect the whole body. The reaction can be life-threatening if left untreated.

three doctors in white coats and scrubs quickly pushing a patient on a bed down a hall of an emergency department

Anaphylaxis is a medical emergency and can be life-threatening. (Image credit: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The treatment: Doctors treated the man with epinephrine (also called adrenaline), a hormonal medication that rapidly reverses the effects of anaphylaxis. They also gave him antihistamines and steroids to help bring the allergic reaction under control, along with intravenous fluids to raise his blood pressure.

However, the patient's blood pressure remained dangerously low, so doctors continued giving him epinephrine through an intravenous drip for about 16 hours. Over the next three days of treatment, his blood pressure stabilized and the swelling in his face gradually subsided.

He was transferred to a general ward and treated there for another five days before being discharged. He was advised that he could have a similar reaction in the future and referred to a dermatologist.

What makes the case unique: Most allergic reactions to hair dye remain limited to the skin, causing itching, redness and swelling where the dye has touched it. Severe reactions affecting the whole body are uncommon, the man's doctors wrote in a report of the case.

Other dilemmas

The itching the man noticed shortly after applying the dye was likely an early, mild allergic reaction, his doctors wrote. That reaction later progressed to a much more severe one, they suggested, raising the possibility of a "biphasic" allergic reaction, an uncommon pattern seen in about 5% of patients with anaphylaxis. However, this remains only a possible explanation.

The doctors also noted that the man's prolonged sun exposure after he applied the dye may have intensified the reaction; they cited previous research that ultraviolet light can enhance the allergy-triggering effects of para-phenylenediamine, a common ingredient in hair dyes. In the report, the doctors did not identify the exact hair dye ingredient that triggered the reaction in this instance.

The case highlights the importance of asking about recent use of products such as hair dye when doctors evaluate patients with otherwise unexplained fainting, facial swelling or shock, the medical team concluded.

For more intriguing medical cases, check out our Diagnostic Dilemma archives.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Can you guess the diagnosis in these strange medical cases? Find out with our diagnostic dilemma quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ How well can AI and humans work together? Scientists are turning to Dungeons & Dragons to find out ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/how-well-can-ai-and-humans-work-together-scientists-are-turning-to-dungeons-and-dragons-to-find-out + <![CDATA[ New laptop ditches noisy fans and heat sinks for tiny 'cooling chips' — it's much thinner and lighter than you'd expect ]]> + BERLIN — Lenovo has unveiled a concept laptop that uses high-speed air to silently cool its processor, instead of conventional fans or heat sinks. The new system is powered by a tiny computer chip that can fit between your fingers.

The new laptop, called AeroBlade, is fitted with four low-power cooling chips that are both "solid-state," meaning there are no moving parts, and "active" — they use a deliberate cooling mechanism — as opposed to relying on passive thermal energy transfer.

The cooling chips contain tiny membranes that vibrate at ultrasonic frequencies to create 2,000 pascals of back pressure, forcing ambient air through tiny internal jets onto a copper base layer at speeds of around 124 miles per hour (200 kilometers per hour). This air carries heat away from the laptop's central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU), before being violently expelled from tiny vents at its rear hinge.

Lenovo representatives unveiled their new AeroBlade machine at Lenovo Innovation World '26, which took place Sept. 3 at IFA 2026 in Berlin, which itself ran between Sept. 4 and 8.

Made by engineers at Frore Systems, the low-power AirJet Mini chip measures 1.63 x 1.06 x 0.1 inches (41.5 x 27 x 2.65 mm) and weighs just 0.02 pounds (9 grams). Because it contains tech designed to replace conventional cooling technologies, the AeroBlade, which is fitted with a 14-inch (355.6 mm) OLED display, is much thinner and lighter than comparable laptops

The AeroBlade measures less than 0.39 inches (10 mm) thick — where comparably sized machines measure 0.51 inches (12 mm) at their thinnest — and weighs just 1.8 pounds (830 g). Laptops as light as this exist, like the 1.76-pound (799 g) Acer Swift Blade 14, but they're rare. Counterparts with 14-inch screens are normally considered light if they fall between 2.2 to 2.86 pounds (1 to 1.3 kilograms).

A new approach to keeping cool

The Lenovo AeroBlade and the chip that fits inside

Four AirJet Mini chips are fitted inside the new Lenovo concept laptop. (Image credit: Lenovo and Frore Systems)

Both companies are framing the introduction of this technology as a way to cool down the next generation of high-end laptops that will wield on-device artificial intelligence (AI).

Most laptops marketed as "AI PCs" just feature a neural processing unit (NPU) that can run simple AI workloads, such as manipulating or enhancing a webcam's video feed in real time.

But some future laptops will aim to let users run powerful large language models or AI agents without needing to connect to the internet. An example is the forthcoming series of Nvidia RTX Spark laptops, which will feature a new chip designed specifically to orchestrate AI agents locally.

Running on-device AI models usually demands significant power funneled into professional-grade graphics processing units (GPUs). Fans are deployed in all kinds of laptops to keep their chips cool, but they can be noisy. Instead of or in addition to fans, passive heat sinks, found in machines like the MacBook Air or the Microsoft Surface Pro, use metal plates positioned close to heat sources to absorb thermal energy. But these laptops are more prone to throttling — when their software pulls back performance to reduce temperature.

Related stories

The AirJet Mini is a different way of cooling, relying on its own high-velocity jet mechanism to flush hot air away. Frore representatives said in a statement that the device operates at just 21 decibels at peak power — equivalent to the sound of leaves rustling or a whisper — and is capable of removing 7.5 watts of heat. Four of these chips would remove 30W of heat — which is in line with the heat expulsion of conventional laptop fans, although there is variation between models.

The AeroBlade's 2,000 pascals of back pressure a measure of opposing force pushing against the direction of airflow) is roughly 10 times that found in regular laptop fans, which typically falls between 100 and 200 pascals.

Although the underlying cooling technology is a few years old, having first been announced in December 2022, AeroBlade represents the first time it's been used in a fully operational laptop. The chip was previously integrated into the ZOTAC ZBOX PI430AJ Pico mini PC in 2023, while there are no commercially available tablets or laptops available with this chip. The AeroBlade laptop remains a concept model, with no information yet as to when production-ready machines fitted with this new cooling technology will emerge.

Can you match these ancient devices to their pictures? Find out with our computing quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/new-laptop-ditches-noisy-fans-and-heat-sinks-for-tiny-cooling-chips-its-much-thinner-and-lighter-than-youd-expect - + - oUgtGiV3xYKXeevRmHhMaA - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:45:00 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:47:03 +0000 - + vTQkpmX8n2VpYJagmX49F3 + + Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:40:00 +0000 - - - - + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

BERLIN — Lenovo has unveiled a concept laptop that uses high-speed air to silently cool its processor, instead of conventional fans or heat sinks. The new system is powered by a tiny computer chip that can fit between your fingers.

The new laptop, called AeroBlade, is fitted with four low-power cooling chips that are both "solid-state," meaning there are no moving parts, and "active" — they use a deliberate cooling mechanism — as opposed to relying on passive thermal energy transfer.

The cooling chips contain tiny membranes that vibrate at ultrasonic frequencies to create 2,000 pascals of back pressure, forcing ambient air through tiny internal jets onto a copper base layer at speeds of around 124 miles per hour (200 kilometers per hour). This air carries heat away from the laptop's central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU), before being violently expelled from tiny vents at its rear hinge.

Lenovo representatives unveiled their new AeroBlade machine at Lenovo Innovation World '26, which took place Sept. 3 at IFA 2026 in Berlin, which itself ran between Sept. 4 and 8.

Made by engineers at Frore Systems, the low-power AirJet Mini chip measures 1.63 x 1.06 x 0.1 inches (41.5 x 27 x 2.65 mm) and weighs just 0.02 pounds (9 grams). Because it contains tech designed to replace conventional cooling technologies, the AeroBlade, which is fitted with a 14-inch (355.6 mm) OLED display, is much thinner and lighter than comparable laptops

The AeroBlade measures less than 0.39 inches (10 mm) thick — where comparably sized machines measure 0.51 inches (12 mm) at their thinnest — and weighs just 1.8 pounds (830 g). Laptops as light as this exist, like the 1.76-pound (799 g) Acer Swift Blade 14, but they're rare. Counterparts with 14-inch screens are normally considered light if they fall between 2.2 to 2.86 pounds (1 to 1.3 kilograms).

A new approach to keeping cool

The Lenovo AeroBlade and the chip that fits inside

Four AirJet Mini chips are fitted inside the new Lenovo concept laptop. (Image credit: Lenovo and Frore Systems)

Both companies are framing the introduction of this technology as a way to cool down the next generation of high-end laptops that will wield on-device artificial intelligence (AI).

Most laptops marketed as "AI PCs" just feature a neural processing unit (NPU) that can run simple AI workloads, such as manipulating or enhancing a webcam's video feed in real time.

But some future laptops will aim to let users run powerful large language models or AI agents without needing to connect to the internet. An example is the forthcoming series of Nvidia RTX Spark laptops, which will feature a new chip designed specifically to orchestrate AI agents locally.

Running on-device AI models usually demands significant power funneled into professional-grade graphics processing units (GPUs). Fans are deployed in all kinds of laptops to keep their chips cool, but they can be noisy. Instead of or in addition to fans, passive heat sinks, found in machines like the MacBook Air or the Microsoft Surface Pro, use metal plates positioned close to heat sources to absorb thermal energy. But these laptops are more prone to throttling — when their software pulls back performance to reduce temperature.

Related stories

The AirJet Mini is a different way of cooling, relying on its own high-velocity jet mechanism to flush hot air away. Frore representatives said in a statement that the device operates at just 21 decibels at peak power — equivalent to the sound of leaves rustling or a whisper — and is capable of removing 7.5 watts of heat. Four of these chips would remove 30W of heat — which is in line with the heat expulsion of conventional laptop fans, although there is variation between models.

The AeroBlade's 2,000 pascals of back pressure a measure of opposing force pushing against the direction of airflow) is roughly 10 times that found in regular laptop fans, which typically falls between 100 and 200 pascals.

Although the underlying cooling technology is a few years old, having first been announced in December 2022, AeroBlade represents the first time it's been used in a fully operational laptop. The chip was previously integrated into the ZOTAC ZBOX PI430AJ Pico mini PC in 2023, while there are no commercially available tablets or laptops available with this chip. The AeroBlade laptop remains a concept model, with no information yet as to when production-ready machines fitted with this new cooling technology will emerge.

Can you match these ancient devices to their pictures? Find out with our computing quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Amazfit Active Max review: The best budget smartwatch of 2026? ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/exercise/amazfit-active-max-smartwatch-review + <![CDATA[ Strange 'centaur' object between Saturn and Uranus has mysterious, changing rings, James Webb telescope study hints ]]> + The rings around a strange small body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus look mysteriously different from previous views, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggest.

The rings encircle Chariklo, which is a centaur, a strange type of object that shows characteristics of both asteroids and comets. Chariklo is only about 400 miles (250 kilometers) in diameter and is part of a large group of tiny objects in the distant solar system.

Scientists first discovered Chariklo's rings in 2013 — making it the first small solar system body found to have rings — and studied them with ground-based telescopes again in 2014 and 2017. When JWST took another look at Chariklo in 2022, a decade had brought a lot of difference, according to a study published Sept. 9 in the journal Science Advances.

"By comparing JWST observations with those obtained … over the last decade, we discovered opposite changes in the two rings: while the inner ring shows significantly higher opacity, the outer ring shows lower opacity, " Pablo Santos-Sanz, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and first author of the study, said in a statement.

Researchers don't know exactly how the changes took place, but the study authors offered three suggestions. The first is that JWST, which has a fine resolution, was able to see both denser and sparser zones of the rings than previous observations showed. The second is that there were changes in the rings' material or in the grains themselves. Finally, a third possibility is that JWST could see "grains with wavelength-dependent optical properties," meaning the telescope saw effects in composition and grain size that explain the variability.

Santos-Sanz said the research suggests that small bodies with rings — even those orbiting far away from the gravitational influences of planets — may have more changes in their systems than scientists previously thought. "Our results force us to rethink how they form, how they evolve, and what mechanisms maintain their stability," he said.

A theoretical follow-up observation, taken the next time Chariklo passes in front of a star, would help to confirm the new JWST results, the researchers added — especially the apparent decreased opacity of one of the rings and the increased opacity of the other.

"These observations would help disentangle temporal evolution from wavelength-dependent scattering effects, and clarify the physical processes shaping Chariklo’s rings," the researchers stated in the study.

A JWST milestone

Related stories

The new observations of Chariklo also mark the first time that scientists have planned a JWST viewing campaign specifically around a stellar occultation — that is, the researchers timed the viewing precisely to when Chariklo passed in front of a distant star from the telescope's point of view.

All observations of Chariklo's rings, on the ground and in space, have used stellar occultations. That's because the rings are too faint to be imaged directly, so astronomers must instead learn more about the rings by measuring the dips and increases in brightness as Chariklo passes in front of the background star. Scientists use a similar method to study the atmospheres of alien planets with JWST's infrared instruments.

Chariklo's speed relative to JWST was low, at 1.5 miles per second (2.5 kilometers per second), allowing for fine imaging of the rings. To time the occultation, the researchers used info from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which precisely charts the locations and movements of more than 2 billion stars, as well as calculated the orbit of JWST at a location roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth in the opposite direction of the sun. According to the researchers, the planning and execution of the mission required "extreme precision."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/strange-centaur-object-between-saturn-and-uranus-has-mysterious-changing-rings-james-webb-telescope-study-hints - + - KgPTqGS6vwo7wwQaCeJto8 - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:22:27 +0000 - - - - - - + sKE5YUUV7tTAqtZPFvQ6X + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 21:01:34 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The rings around a strange small body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus look mysteriously different from previous views, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggest.

The rings encircle Chariklo, which is a centaur, a strange type of object that shows characteristics of both asteroids and comets. Chariklo is only about 400 miles (250 kilometers) in diameter and is part of a large group of tiny objects in the distant solar system.

Scientists first discovered Chariklo's rings in 2013 — making it the first small solar system body found to have rings — and studied them with ground-based telescopes again in 2014 and 2017. When JWST took another look at Chariklo in 2022, a decade had brought a lot of difference, according to a study published Sept. 9 in the journal Science Advances.

"By comparing JWST observations with those obtained … over the last decade, we discovered opposite changes in the two rings: while the inner ring shows significantly higher opacity, the outer ring shows lower opacity, " Pablo Santos-Sanz, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and first author of the study, said in a statement.

Researchers don't know exactly how the changes took place, but the study authors offered three suggestions. The first is that JWST, which has a fine resolution, was able to see both denser and sparser zones of the rings than previous observations showed. The second is that there were changes in the rings' material or in the grains themselves. Finally, a third possibility is that JWST could see "grains with wavelength-dependent optical properties," meaning the telescope saw effects in composition and grain size that explain the variability.

Santos-Sanz said the research suggests that small bodies with rings — even those orbiting far away from the gravitational influences of planets — may have more changes in their systems than scientists previously thought. "Our results force us to rethink how they form, how they evolve, and what mechanisms maintain their stability," he said.

A theoretical follow-up observation, taken the next time Chariklo passes in front of a star, would help to confirm the new JWST results, the researchers added — especially the apparent decreased opacity of one of the rings and the increased opacity of the other.

"These observations would help disentangle temporal evolution from wavelength-dependent scattering effects, and clarify the physical processes shaping Chariklo’s rings," the researchers stated in the study.

A JWST milestone

Related stories

The new observations of Chariklo also mark the first time that scientists have planned a JWST viewing campaign specifically around a stellar occultation — that is, the researchers timed the viewing precisely to when Chariklo passed in front of a distant star from the telescope's point of view.

All observations of Chariklo's rings, on the ground and in space, have used stellar occultations. That's because the rings are too faint to be imaged directly, so astronomers must instead learn more about the rings by measuring the dips and increases in brightness as Chariklo passes in front of the background star. Scientists use a similar method to study the atmospheres of alien planets with JWST's infrared instruments.

Chariklo's speed relative to JWST was low, at 1.5 miles per second (2.5 kilometers per second), allowing for fine imaging of the rings. To time the occultation, the researchers used info from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which precisely charts the locations and movements of more than 2 billion stars, as well as calculated the orbit of JWST at a location roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth in the opposite direction of the sun. According to the researchers, the planning and execution of the mission required "extreme precision."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Saltwater crocodiles crossed the Indian Ocean to reach the Seychelles — before humans arrived and wiped them out ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/alligators-crocodiles/saltwater-crocodiles-crossed-the-indian-ocean-to-reach-the-seychelles-before-humans-arrived-and-wiped-them-out + <![CDATA[ We're not about to awaken an evil digital god — AI is far more likely to end in a great disappointment ]]> +
A gift from Live Science Pro

This is a Live Science Pro article that we're putting out for free. If you liked this story, please consider subscribing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) terrifies us partly because it is new and partly because it is disturbingly familiar. We have invented machines that converse, flatter, argue and improvise with uncanny fluency. Confronted by this synthetic reflection, we behave like early humans seeing a mirror for the first time: We project consciousness behind the glass, then populate it with our expected behaviors, emotions, hopes and nightmares. In other words, we scare ourselves.

Today's frontier models are impressively good at writing, coding and math. Yet they still fail at ingredients of useful artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that matches or surpasses human capabilities such as consistent reasoning, long-term planning, factual consistency and reliable performance outside their "experience" (the data they were trained on). We are right to worry about the theoretical dangers of artificial superintelligence (ASI) because of the danger that such a system might outwit its human creators and pursue its own ends, potentially at our expense. While some AI executives have asserted that we've reached AGI, these claims are contentious and do not meet more considered definitions of AGI.

It's easy to fear such a potentially advanced technology, but extravagant worst-case scenarios obscure more immediate and important risks. The most likely danger is not a digital god awakening and launching a Hollywood-style war against humanity. After all, AI depends on electricity, cooling, data centers, specialized chips, networks, technicians and sprawling supply chains, all of which are scarce and often fragile. Interrupt the power, restrict the graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train them, disable the cooling or disconnect the network, and in most scenarios, the supposedly omnipotent machine that's out to kill humanity stops.

A genuine ASI might recognize this as an obvious fact; it is codependent on humanity, at least for the foreseeable future. A true intelligence capable of understanding the world better than we do might know that destroying its own industrial support system would be self-defeating.

A true intelligence might also recognize that its understanding of the physical world is limited and secondhand ‪—‬ accessible to it only by virtue of the texts, videos and audio feeds it can access. It lacks that crucial element of being embodied in the world — understanding how gravity behaves, what weather feels like, how objects interact, and so on. A true intelligence might realize this, see the limitations of its experience and, therefore, tread with caution. A true intelligence might be completely different from human intelligence, having other strengths, weaknesses, approaches, and even ethics. For example, consider that an AI intelligence can copy itself, running as myriad instances, communicating as a "hive mind" — a very different kind of intelligence. But I speculate.

What I can say is that the systems that should worry us most are not necessarily the smartest ones but rather the incomplete intelligences acting on narrow objectives, given agency and offered access to critical infrastructure. These systems may accidentally harm us simply because they don't know any better. For example, there is a thought experiment created by Nick Bostrom, known as the "paper clip problem," where an AI pursues its objectives of making as many paper clips as it can, but it then achieves that aim at the expense of the Earth and humanity which all get converted to paperclips in the pursuit of the AI’s narrow goals.

The critical question here is what we give such systems control over. That's our choice and one we should make carefully. In the near term, two hazards deserve priority: cyber disruption and long-term economic upheaval.

AI-enabled cyberattacks could significantly disrupt advanced economies because hospitals, banks, energy networks, logistics companies and governments depend on interconnected digital systems. Recent examples of frontier AI systems hacking organizations, such as the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident, have given currency to this fear. Such attacks can result in extraordinary financial damage without being existential. Large parts of the world remain loosely connected to frontier AI — or even to the internet — and would not disappear simply because servers in wealthy countries failed.

The likeliest route by which advanced AI could exert control is not killer robots, but influence — misleading people, manipulating institutions and redirecting human effort. Yet humans already demonstrate formidable competence at misinformation, self-deception and destructive coordination. AI may industrialize those weaknesses; indeed, humans are using AI to industrialize those limitations, but AI did not invent them.

There are clear risks associated with AI, but the likeliest one is that a high-profile debacle leads to a freeze in investment before the technology's most promising applications can come to fruition. (Image credit: Getty Images/peshkov)

Economically, the danger is that companies will dismiss workers long before AI has proved capable of replacing them, cashing in the "AI dividend" too soon. Executives seduced by demos may confuse fluent language output with dependable labor, shedding institutional knowledge to chase theoretical efficiencies. The enticing vision of the "one-person unicorn," where a person or a small group builds a billion-dollar business using AI as its workforce is questionable technically, economically and socially, even as a small handful of early examples take shape. Organizations are not merely bundles of tasks. They contain accountability, relationships, tacit knowledge and trust, forming part of a local and national community, resilient because of the diversity of skills and ideas they possess.

My suspicion is that the political turning point will resemble something like the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, where malware with core elements designed by the National Security Agency got wildly out of control, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, infamously disrupting the U.K.'s National Health Service. A cyber operation amplified by frontier AI would be worse. Services would fail, lawsuits would multiply, companies could collapse and investors would retreat. Governments would demand a pause — or force laboratories to redirect resources toward control, auditing and safety, and companies would comply, if only to limit class-action legal exposure.

After the panic, the public might ask why we let this happen. And there have been multiple attempts to enact a pause, cessation or "kill switch" in AI development. We could enter another AI winter — where funding is cut and research stalls — similar to previous downturns in the 1970s and early 1990s.

There is also an uncomfortable likelihood that AI labs themselves are amplifying fear and uncertainty. Casting a product as potentially world-ending implies unprecedented power. Such narratives are just marketing; they may help to sustain investment, defend stock valuations, and prepare for forthcoming initial public offerings (IPOs) even when business models remain uncertain. It's hard to speculate about a company's motivations ‪—‬ but there are obvious incentives, so their behaviors deserve scrutiny.

The more mundane outcome may be "the great disappointment." Advanced AI could prove too expensive and insufficiently useful to continue on its present trajectory.

The training and operation of frontier systems consume enormous amounts of computing time, electricity, water, capital, hardware and human effort. Unless those costs fall to a fraction of today's levels, the economics of "Big AI" may prove unsustainable. Meanwhile, important unsolved problems in AI ‪—‬ like reliability, interpretability and continuous learning ‪—‬ are being overshadowed by the race to build incrementally better models, each vying for the top slot in the various AI performance indices.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

The strongest case for AI may instead lie in artificial specialized intelligence: systems such as AlphaFold2, which predicts the structures of proteins, or WeatherNext 3, an advanced global weather forecasting model. These systems are designed for domains where performance can be measured and where the benefits justify the costs. We know AI is genuinely useful when aimed at topics like drug discovery, diagnostics, materials science, power grid optimization and climate change modeling — rather than human-like chatbots generating emails, advertisements and synthetic entertainment.

The great tragedy, and possibly the biggest danger, would be to continue to direct precious resources toward the creation of mediocre human simulacra, get bored or scared of AI, and abandon the field precisely when it could do the most good. Fear is appropriate when it sharpens engineering and governance. It becomes dangerous when it distorts understanding and priorities.

It’s unlikely that AI will become our conqueror anytime soon. Instead, it will probably become an expensive disappointment. But if the backlash slows work that could help cure cancer or address climate change, the failure will not belong to the machines. It will be ours.

Opinion on Live Science gives you insight on the most important issues in science that affect you and the world around you today, written by experts and leading scientists in their field.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/the-real-ai-danger-is-not-superintelligence-it-is-premature-trust-opinion - + Andrew Rogoyski. ]]> - L6XqC9gDz3vF4P6yeRzbaR - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:16:08 +0000 Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:09:50 +0000 - - - - - - - + g64dsAqd7LBHvCxDyiwjic + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 20:39:00 +0000 Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:54:30 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +
A gift from Live Science Pro

This is a Live Science Pro article that we're putting out for free. If you liked this story, please consider subscribing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) terrifies us partly because it is new and partly because it is disturbingly familiar. We have invented machines that converse, flatter, argue and improvise with uncanny fluency. Confronted by this synthetic reflection, we behave like early humans seeing a mirror for the first time: We project consciousness behind the glass, then populate it with our expected behaviors, emotions, hopes and nightmares. In other words, we scare ourselves.

Today's frontier models are impressively good at writing, coding and math. Yet they still fail at ingredients of useful artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that matches or surpasses human capabilities such as consistent reasoning, long-term planning, factual consistency and reliable performance outside their "experience" (the data they were trained on). We are right to worry about the theoretical dangers of artificial superintelligence (ASI) because of the danger that such a system might outwit its human creators and pursue its own ends, potentially at our expense. While some AI executives have asserted that we've reached AGI, these claims are contentious and do not meet more considered definitions of AGI.

It's easy to fear such a potentially advanced technology, but extravagant worst-case scenarios obscure more immediate and important risks. The most likely danger is not a digital god awakening and launching a Hollywood-style war against humanity. After all, AI depends on electricity, cooling, data centers, specialized chips, networks, technicians and sprawling supply chains, all of which are scarce and often fragile. Interrupt the power, restrict the graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train them, disable the cooling or disconnect the network, and in most scenarios, the supposedly omnipotent machine that's out to kill humanity stops.

A genuine ASI might recognize this as an obvious fact; it is codependent on humanity, at least for the foreseeable future. A true intelligence capable of understanding the world better than we do might know that destroying its own industrial support system would be self-defeating.

A true intelligence might also recognize that its understanding of the physical world is limited and secondhand ‪—‬ accessible to it only by virtue of the texts, videos and audio feeds it can access. It lacks that crucial element of being embodied in the world — understanding how gravity behaves, what weather feels like, how objects interact, and so on. A true intelligence might realize this, see the limitations of its experience and, therefore, tread with caution. A true intelligence might be completely different from human intelligence, having other strengths, weaknesses, approaches, and even ethics. For example, consider that an AI intelligence can copy itself, running as myriad instances, communicating as a "hive mind" — a very different kind of intelligence. But I speculate.

What I can say is that the systems that should worry us most are not necessarily the smartest ones but rather the incomplete intelligences acting on narrow objectives, given agency and offered access to critical infrastructure. These systems may accidentally harm us simply because they don't know any better. For example, there is a thought experiment created by Nick Bostrom, known as the "paper clip problem," where an AI pursues its objectives of making as many paper clips as it can, but it then achieves that aim at the expense of the Earth and humanity which all get converted to paperclips in the pursuit of the AI’s narrow goals.

The critical question here is what we give such systems control over. That's our choice and one we should make carefully. In the near term, two hazards deserve priority: cyber disruption and long-term economic upheaval.

AI-enabled cyberattacks could significantly disrupt advanced economies because hospitals, banks, energy networks, logistics companies and governments depend on interconnected digital systems. Recent examples of frontier AI systems hacking organizations, such as the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident, have given currency to this fear. Such attacks can result in extraordinary financial damage without being existential. Large parts of the world remain loosely connected to frontier AI — or even to the internet — and would not disappear simply because servers in wealthy countries failed.

The likeliest route by which advanced AI could exert control is not killer robots, but influence — misleading people, manipulating institutions and redirecting human effort. Yet humans already demonstrate formidable competence at misinformation, self-deception and destructive coordination. AI may industrialize those weaknesses; indeed, humans are using AI to industrialize those limitations, but AI did not invent them.

There are clear risks associated with AI, but the likeliest one is that a high-profile debacle leads to a freeze in investment before the technology's most promising applications can come to fruition. (Image credit: Getty Images/peshkov)

Economically, the danger is that companies will dismiss workers long before AI has proved capable of replacing them, cashing in the "AI dividend" too soon. Executives seduced by demos may confuse fluent language output with dependable labor, shedding institutional knowledge to chase theoretical efficiencies. The enticing vision of the "one-person unicorn," where a person or a small group builds a billion-dollar business using AI as its workforce is questionable technically, economically and socially, even as a small handful of early examples take shape. Organizations are not merely bundles of tasks. They contain accountability, relationships, tacit knowledge and trust, forming part of a local and national community, resilient because of the diversity of skills and ideas they possess.

My suspicion is that the political turning point will resemble something like the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, where malware with core elements designed by the National Security Agency got wildly out of control, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, infamously disrupting the U.K.'s National Health Service. A cyber operation amplified by frontier AI would be worse. Services would fail, lawsuits would multiply, companies could collapse and investors would retreat. Governments would demand a pause — or force laboratories to redirect resources toward control, auditing and safety, and companies would comply, if only to limit class-action legal exposure.

After the panic, the public might ask why we let this happen. And there have been multiple attempts to enact a pause, cessation or "kill switch" in AI development. We could enter another AI winter — where funding is cut and research stalls — similar to previous downturns in the 1970s and early 1990s.

There is also an uncomfortable likelihood that AI labs themselves are amplifying fear and uncertainty. Casting a product as potentially world-ending implies unprecedented power. Such narratives are just marketing; they may help to sustain investment, defend stock valuations, and prepare for forthcoming initial public offerings (IPOs) even when business models remain uncertain. It's hard to speculate about a company's motivations ‪—‬ but there are obvious incentives, so their behaviors deserve scrutiny.

The more mundane outcome may be "the great disappointment." Advanced AI could prove too expensive and insufficiently useful to continue on its present trajectory.

The training and operation of frontier systems consume enormous amounts of computing time, electricity, water, capital, hardware and human effort. Unless those costs fall to a fraction of today's levels, the economics of "Big AI" may prove unsustainable. Meanwhile, important unsolved problems in AI ‪—‬ like reliability, interpretability and continuous learning ‪—‬ are being overshadowed by the race to build incrementally better models, each vying for the top slot in the various AI performance indices.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

The strongest case for AI may instead lie in artificial specialized intelligence: systems such as AlphaFold2, which predicts the structures of proteins, or WeatherNext 3, an advanced global weather forecasting model. These systems are designed for domains where performance can be measured and where the benefits justify the costs. We know AI is genuinely useful when aimed at topics like drug discovery, diagnostics, materials science, power grid optimization and climate change modeling — rather than human-like chatbots generating emails, advertisements and synthetic entertainment.

The great tragedy, and possibly the biggest danger, would be to continue to direct precious resources toward the creation of mediocre human simulacra, get bored or scared of AI, and abandon the field precisely when it could do the most good. Fear is appropriate when it sharpens engineering and governance. It becomes dangerous when it distorts understanding and priorities.

It’s unlikely that AI will become our conqueror anytime soon. Instead, it will probably become an expensive disappointment. But if the backlash slows work that could help cure cancer or address climate change, the failure will not belong to the machines. It will be ours.

Opinion on Live Science gives you insight on the most important issues in science that affect you and the world around you today, written by experts and leading scientists in their field.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ The US will see a rare 'blood moon' eclipse before sunrise this March: Where and when to look ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/the-us-will-see-a-rare-blood-moon-eclipse-before-sunrise-this-march-where-and-when-to-look + <![CDATA[ Are you worried about the US deploying weapons in space? ]]> +
Related stories

For years, the idea of nuclear weapons in space sounded more like science fiction than a realistic threat. That changed Monday (Sept. 14), when U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland that the U.S. had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."

While the officials have not said that these weapons are nuclear, the announcement has raised a question: If countries are now openly putting weapons in space, how far away are we from a future where nuclear weapons become part of that competition?

The concerns about nukes in space goes back to the 1960s. In 1967, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty, in which the nations agreed to not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth. But this treaty never included an enforcement mechanism — and now, that tenuous compromise may have been violated entirely, inviting other countries to add their own weapons to the final frontier.

With the U.S.' recent announcement, are you worried about an arms race in space? Vote in our poll below, and leave your thoughts in the comments.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/are-you-worried-about-the-us-deploying-weapons-in-space - + - hnFR4WFKfzoWf9rSAh5S8c - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:10:11 +0000 - - - - - - - + QxwKm6CRsQDscnPc7ztidU + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 20:29:46 +0000 Tue, 15 Sep 2026 20:32:15 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +
Related stories

For years, the idea of nuclear weapons in space sounded more like science fiction than a realistic threat. That changed Monday (Sept. 14), when U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland that the U.S. had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."

While the officials have not said that these weapons are nuclear, the announcement has raised a question: If countries are now openly putting weapons in space, how far away are we from a future where nuclear weapons become part of that competition?

The concerns about nukes in space goes back to the 1960s. In 1967, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty, in which the nations agreed to not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth. But this treaty never included an enforcement mechanism — and now, that tenuous compromise may have been violated entirely, inviting other countries to add their own weapons to the final frontier.

With the U.S.' recent announcement, are you worried about an arms race in space? Vote in our poll below, and leave your thoughts in the comments.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Daily sudoku: Take a break with this classic numbers puzzle ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/daily-sudoku + <![CDATA[ 'Maybe robots can maintain houseplants': Readers react to letting humanoid robots take over their housework ]]> + The idea of a humanoid robot folding laundry, loading the dishwasher or vacuuming once sounded like a scene from "The Jetsons." Now, as robotics companies race to develop machines that can navigate everyday environments and handle household tasks, the prospect of a robot taking over our chores feels increasingly real.

But just because robots can do the work, that doesn't mean people are ready to welcome them into their homes.

Live Science recently polled readers on whether they would want a humanoid robot doing their household chores, and the results reveal just how appealing the idea of a robotic housekeeper really is.

As of Sept. 15, over 600 people had responded, with 42% choosing to let the robot "take my chores, please." This pattern was reflected in the comments, with one reader stating, "I would, but I doubt my wife would approve of the job the robot did." To this, another reader responded, "Good for her. Take her household responsibilities for a year and report back."

Thirty-six percent of voters, the next-largest bloc, chose the opposite answer: "No, I don't trust it with my dishes (or data)." Humanoid robots are taught movements and tasks by building world models from the environments around them. While the technology remains primitive — resulting in some clumsy (albeit hilarious) mechanical failures — this, rather than privacy concerns, seems to be the current focus of deploying these machines.

Related stories

It's these mechanical concerns that other commenters focused on, with one reader writing, "I don't think robots are dexterous enough to do dusting chores. Maybe vacuuming, but probably slow and clumsy moving furniture."

The reader also cast doubt on washing floors and moving furniture to mop hard floors ‪—‬ could it discern between items that could and couldn't be loaded into the dishwasher?

"Maybe robots can maintain houseplants," they continued. "Certainly, equipped with a moisture meter and a huge horticultural database, robots can probably serve a better role as waterers in huge commercial nurseries…"

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/technology/robotics/maybe-robots-can-maintain-houseplants-readers-react-to-letting-humanoid-robots-take-over-their-housework - + - p9EixX9ZkEHL4fhvEVa3vY - - Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:58:29 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:58:30 +0000 - - - - - - + 4GCVgvEH95jK2j7UwpNEw5 + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:14:37 +0000 Tue, 15 Sep 2026 19:05:27 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The idea of a humanoid robot folding laundry, loading the dishwasher or vacuuming once sounded like a scene from "The Jetsons." Now, as robotics companies race to develop machines that can navigate everyday environments and handle household tasks, the prospect of a robot taking over our chores feels increasingly real.

But just because robots can do the work, that doesn't mean people are ready to welcome them into their homes.

Live Science recently polled readers on whether they would want a humanoid robot doing their household chores, and the results reveal just how appealing the idea of a robotic housekeeper really is.

As of Sept. 15, over 600 people had responded, with 42% choosing to let the robot "take my chores, please." This pattern was reflected in the comments, with one reader stating, "I would, but I doubt my wife would approve of the job the robot did." To this, another reader responded, "Good for her. Take her household responsibilities for a year and report back."

Thirty-six percent of voters, the next-largest bloc, chose the opposite answer: "No, I don't trust it with my dishes (or data)." Humanoid robots are taught movements and tasks by building world models from the environments around them. While the technology remains primitive — resulting in some clumsy (albeit hilarious) mechanical failures — this, rather than privacy concerns, seems to be the current focus of deploying these machines.

Related stories

It's these mechanical concerns that other commenters focused on, with one reader writing, "I don't think robots are dexterous enough to do dusting chores. Maybe vacuuming, but probably slow and clumsy moving furniture."

The reader also cast doubt on washing floors and moving furniture to mop hard floors ‪—‬ could it discern between items that could and couldn't be loaded into the dishwasher?

"Maybe robots can maintain houseplants," they continued. "Certainly, equipped with a moisture meter and a huge horticultural database, robots can probably serve a better role as waterers in huge commercial nurseries…"

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Remote region in Greece has one of the most genetically distinct populations in Europe ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/remote-region-in-greece-has-one-of-the-most-genetically-distinct-populations-in-europe + <![CDATA[ Did 'all roads lead to Rome'? New study finds other cities in the empire were better connected. ]]> + The saying that "all roads lead to Rome" may be famous, but a new study finds it's far from true. Extensive new research of the Roman Empire's road system reveals that several other Roman cities were better connected than the Eternal City was during antiquity.

Major cities like Antioch, Ancyra (modern-day Ankara) and Byzantium in what is now Turkey, as well as Corinth in Greece, were "better located than Rome" for those traveling by land, the team wrote in a paper published Tuesday (Sept. 15) in the journal Nature Communications.

At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire covered almost 2.1 million square miles (5.5 million square kilometers) around the Mediterranean Sea, occupying much of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the team noted in the study.

For years, the scientists have been creating a vast digital atlas called "Itiner-e" of nearly 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) of Roman roads. For the new study, they calculated how well Roman cities were connected to the road system.

In fact, the empire's "most important intermediary route" by land identified in the study didn't even run through Rome.

The ancient streets of Ostia, the seaport of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber River, are still visible today. (Image credit: Tom Brughmans)

"It follows the North African and Levantine coast past Antioch and near Ankara, crosses over to Europe at Constantinople, and moves through the Po Valley and Milan into France," study co-author Tom Brughmans, a professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Live Science in an email.

The other well-connected cities had a bevy of reasons for their numerous roads. For instance, Corinth was better connected to the road network because the roads that ran through it linked the Greek Peloponnesian Peninsula to the rest of Greece, and Ancyra was better connected because it was a vital transportation hub for Anatolia.

The Arch of Drusus in Rome is near the beginning of the Via Appia, an ancient and famous Roman road that is still in use today. (Image credit: Tom Brughmans)

Rome's unique location is likely the biggest reason why it wasn’t as well connected to the road system as these other cities.

Brughmans noted that the "Italian Peninsula is an appendix to the empire's road network, and Rome is halfway down this appendix." And when "we consider all movement within the entire Italian Peninsula, we were shocked to discover that the most central road actually follows the opposite Adriatic coastline, bypassing Rome altogether," Brughmans added.

The study also found that when the shape of the land allowed it, Roman roads tended to be straight, but they were not as straight as modern-day roads.

Today, "modern road building avoids sharp turns and aims to build as straight roads as possible by strongly modifying the terrain to facilitate faster travel by car, which is made possible by modern surveying and construction methods," the team wrote in their paper.

Sea and river connections

Although the new research sheds light on road connections, it's important to remember that road travel wasn't the only means of transport in the Roman Empire. In fact, the researchers noted that Rome may have had a more significant position for sea and river transportation than it had for road transportation.

Passersby can still walk on the city streets of the ancient port city Ostia. (Image credit: Tom Brughmans)
Related stories

Although the study didn't look at waterways, Rome's central location in the empire meant that it would have been an important hub of water transport, the team wrote in the study.

"Rome's central location is not due to its roads, but its physical location in the centre of the Mediterranean, on the nexus of major shipping lanes," Brughmans explained.

The team said future studies should examine sea and river transport and integrate their findings with the team's Roman roads study. When considered together, road and waterway routes may help researchers better understand Roman transportation networks.

Pažout, A. et al. (2026). Network science reveals the structure and lasting impact of the Roman road system. Nature Communications, 17(9551). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75453-3

From Augustus to Nero, see how much you know about ancient Rome's famous leaders with our Roman emperor quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/did-all-roads-lead-to-rome-new-study-finds-other-cities-in-the-empire-were-better-connected - + - iN6KFFDaGDHiayfFxbEqSY - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:29:04 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:29:05 +0000 - + uAZq3CqL3wYKk3TFT7JfH7 + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000 Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:11:56 +0000 + - - - - + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The saying that "all roads lead to Rome" may be famous, but a new study finds it's far from true. Extensive new research of the Roman Empire's road system reveals that several other Roman cities were better connected than the Eternal City was during antiquity.

Major cities like Antioch, Ancyra (modern-day Ankara) and Byzantium in what is now Turkey, as well as Corinth in Greece, were "better located than Rome" for those traveling by land, the team wrote in a paper published Tuesday (Sept. 15) in the journal Nature Communications.

At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire covered almost 2.1 million square miles (5.5 million square kilometers) around the Mediterranean Sea, occupying much of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the team noted in the study.

For years, the scientists have been creating a vast digital atlas called "Itiner-e" of nearly 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) of Roman roads. For the new study, they calculated how well Roman cities were connected to the road system.

In fact, the empire's "most important intermediary route" by land identified in the study didn't even run through Rome.

The ancient streets of Ostia, the seaport of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber River, are still visible today. (Image credit: Tom Brughmans)

"It follows the North African and Levantine coast past Antioch and near Ankara, crosses over to Europe at Constantinople, and moves through the Po Valley and Milan into France," study co-author Tom Brughmans, a professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Live Science in an email.

The other well-connected cities had a bevy of reasons for their numerous roads. For instance, Corinth was better connected to the road network because the roads that ran through it linked the Greek Peloponnesian Peninsula to the rest of Greece, and Ancyra was better connected because it was a vital transportation hub for Anatolia.

The Arch of Drusus in Rome is near the beginning of the Via Appia, an ancient and famous Roman road that is still in use today. (Image credit: Tom Brughmans)

Rome's unique location is likely the biggest reason why it wasn’t as well connected to the road system as these other cities.

Brughmans noted that the "Italian Peninsula is an appendix to the empire's road network, and Rome is halfway down this appendix." And when "we consider all movement within the entire Italian Peninsula, we were shocked to discover that the most central road actually follows the opposite Adriatic coastline, bypassing Rome altogether," Brughmans added.

The study also found that when the shape of the land allowed it, Roman roads tended to be straight, but they were not as straight as modern-day roads.

Today, "modern road building avoids sharp turns and aims to build as straight roads as possible by strongly modifying the terrain to facilitate faster travel by car, which is made possible by modern surveying and construction methods," the team wrote in their paper.

Sea and river connections

Although the new research sheds light on road connections, it's important to remember that road travel wasn't the only means of transport in the Roman Empire. In fact, the researchers noted that Rome may have had a more significant position for sea and river transportation than it had for road transportation.

Passersby can still walk on the city streets of the ancient port city Ostia. (Image credit: Tom Brughmans)
Related stories

Although the study didn't look at waterways, Rome's central location in the empire meant that it would have been an important hub of water transport, the team wrote in the study.

"Rome's central location is not due to its roads, but its physical location in the centre of the Mediterranean, on the nexus of major shipping lanes," Brughmans explained.

The team said future studies should examine sea and river transport and integrate their findings with the team's Roman roads study. When considered together, road and waterway routes may help researchers better understand Roman transportation networks.

Pažout, A. et al. (2026). Network science reveals the structure and lasting impact of the Roman road system. Nature Communications, 17(9551). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75453-3

From Augustus to Nero, see how much you know about ancient Rome's famous leaders with our Roman emperor quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Life-friendly molecules are leaking out of Jupiter's giant moon Europa, Galileo images hint ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/planets/life-friendly-molecules-are-leaking-out-of-jupiters-giant-moon-europa-galileo-images-hint + <![CDATA[ Fossils of iconic long-necked dinosaur Diplodocus found in Europe for first time — and it may have traveled there via land bridge ]]> + Paleontologists have identified the first confirmed remains of Diplodocus — "Dippy," for short — outside the western U.S., revealing that the iconic long-necked dinosaur reached what is now Spain roughly 150 million years ago.

The findings show that the enormous sauropod didn't live only in North America, as was long thought. Instead, it may have rambled across a land bridge all the way to Europe, the new study suggests.

The discovery, made at the La Tejería site near the small village of El Castellar in eastern Spain, provides some of the strongest fossil evidence yet that dinosaurs could move between North America and Europe during the Late Jurassic, when the Atlantic Ocean was still in its early stages of opening after the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The researchers published their findings Tuesday (Sept. 15) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"Paleontological studies like this one help us better understand the history of life on Earth, reconstruct ancient ecosystems, and understand how they changed through time," study first author Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a doctoral student who studies biodiversity and evolutionary biology at the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis (Dinópolis Foundation), a paleontological research institution, told Live Science via email.

A sauropod in Spain

Dippy is one of the best-known dinosaurs. After its fossils made their grand debut at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s, life-size fossil replicas of the towering herbivore were sent around the world, including to England, France, Spain, Argentina and Russia.

But until now, Diplodocus' Late Jurassic fossils were known only from the Morrison Formation in the western United States ‪—‬ and the latest discovery shows that Dippy wasn't a homebody.

The newly unearthed Diplodocus specimen consists of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevrons ‪—‬ bones that helped support blood vessels and muscles within the dinosaur's tail.

Study co-author and managing director of the Dinópolis Foundation, Alberto Cobos, said it was a friend who "thought he had spotted some bones on a mountainside," Cobos told Live Science via email. "That very day, I went to the site near El Castellar (a village in the province of Teruel). Sure enough, we saw a couple of sauropod vertebral centers."

Although only part of the skeleton has been recovered, the bones show a series of characteristics associated with Diplodocus, including large cavities corresponding to where air sacs would have been, along with deep grooves running alongside the underside of the tailbones.

The 14 vertebrate and several chevrons found in Spain correspond to the Dipolodocus' anatomy. (Image credit: Carmelo López)

"It was an exciting and continuous process of seeing the pieces of the puzzle gradually fall into place," Sánchez Fenollosa said in a statement. "From the early stages of the osteological study, we noticed strong similarities with several diplodocine sauropods … With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus."

It's unclear which species of Diplodocus the new specimen is, but like others of its genus, it was a huge dinosaur with an extremely long neck and whip-like tail.

"The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters [82 feet] long (comparable in size to its North American relatives), making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic," Cobos said in the statement.

An ancient bridge

Between 195 million and 170 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart as the Atlantic Ocean opened. But the ocean was much narrower than it is today, and the continents were not necessarily as isolated as their modern geography is now.

Evidence indicates that temporary land bridges may have allowed some animals to move between the two regions. The most famous prehistoric land bridge is the Bering Land Bridge that humans used to move between Asia and what is now Alaska. Previous research showed the Bering Land Bridge also existed around 68 million years ago, and it may have allowed an Asian ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex to trek into North America.

One possible route for Diplodocus into Spain may have been a land bridge that connected what is now Newfoundland with the Iberian Peninsula.

Related stories

Geological conditions may have allowed dinosaurs like Diplodocus to move between continents, Sánchez Fenollosa told Live Science in an email. "This interpretation is supported not only by the fossil record but also by geological evidence," he said.

The newfound Diplodocus fossils also suggest that the distribution of giant sauropods was more complicated than the fossil record previously indicated.

"More complete specimens will be essential to understand this story in greater detail, particularly to determine which Diplodocus species inhabited Europe: whether it was one already known from North America or a previously unknown species," Sánchez Fenollosa said. "This discovery reminds us that even for such iconic dinosaurs, there are still many unanswered questions about their evolutionary history and biogeography."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaurs/fossils-of-iconic-long-necked-dinosaur-diplodocus-found-in-europe-for-first-time-and-it-may-have-traveled-there-via-land-bridge - + - TPtAGRmXApzHjWx2rmriwW - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:55:19 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:10:11 +0000 - - - - - - - + nHDJwfzFFHNY7fgK77v4wb + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:11:51 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Paleontologists have identified the first confirmed remains of Diplodocus — "Dippy," for short — outside the western U.S., revealing that the iconic long-necked dinosaur reached what is now Spain roughly 150 million years ago.

The findings show that the enormous sauropod didn't live only in North America, as was long thought. Instead, it may have rambled across a land bridge all the way to Europe, the new study suggests.

The discovery, made at the La Tejería site near the small village of El Castellar in eastern Spain, provides some of the strongest fossil evidence yet that dinosaurs could move between North America and Europe during the Late Jurassic, when the Atlantic Ocean was still in its early stages of opening after the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The researchers published their findings Tuesday (Sept. 15) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"Paleontological studies like this one help us better understand the history of life on Earth, reconstruct ancient ecosystems, and understand how they changed through time," study first author Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a doctoral student who studies biodiversity and evolutionary biology at the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis (Dinópolis Foundation), a paleontological research institution, told Live Science via email.

A sauropod in Spain

Dippy is one of the best-known dinosaurs. After its fossils made their grand debut at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s, life-size fossil replicas of the towering herbivore were sent around the world, including to England, France, Spain, Argentina and Russia.

But until now, Diplodocus' Late Jurassic fossils were known only from the Morrison Formation in the western United States ‪—‬ and the latest discovery shows that Dippy wasn't a homebody.

The newly unearthed Diplodocus specimen consists of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevrons ‪—‬ bones that helped support blood vessels and muscles within the dinosaur's tail.

Study co-author and managing director of the Dinópolis Foundation, Alberto Cobos, said it was a friend who "thought he had spotted some bones on a mountainside," Cobos told Live Science via email. "That very day, I went to the site near El Castellar (a village in the province of Teruel). Sure enough, we saw a couple of sauropod vertebral centers."

Although only part of the skeleton has been recovered, the bones show a series of characteristics associated with Diplodocus, including large cavities corresponding to where air sacs would have been, along with deep grooves running alongside the underside of the tailbones.

The 14 vertebrate and several chevrons found in Spain correspond to the Dipolodocus' anatomy. (Image credit: Carmelo López)

"It was an exciting and continuous process of seeing the pieces of the puzzle gradually fall into place," Sánchez Fenollosa said in a statement. "From the early stages of the osteological study, we noticed strong similarities with several diplodocine sauropods … With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus."

It's unclear which species of Diplodocus the new specimen is, but like others of its genus, it was a huge dinosaur with an extremely long neck and whip-like tail.

"The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters [82 feet] long (comparable in size to its North American relatives), making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic," Cobos said in the statement.

An ancient bridge

Between 195 million and 170 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart as the Atlantic Ocean opened. But the ocean was much narrower than it is today, and the continents were not necessarily as isolated as their modern geography is now.

Evidence indicates that temporary land bridges may have allowed some animals to move between the two regions. The most famous prehistoric land bridge is the Bering Land Bridge that humans used to move between Asia and what is now Alaska. Previous research showed the Bering Land Bridge also existed around 68 million years ago, and it may have allowed an Asian ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex to trek into North America.

One possible route for Diplodocus into Spain may have been a land bridge that connected what is now Newfoundland with the Iberian Peninsula.

Related stories

Geological conditions may have allowed dinosaurs like Diplodocus to move between continents, Sánchez Fenollosa told Live Science in an email. "This interpretation is supported not only by the fossil record but also by geological evidence," he said.

The newfound Diplodocus fossils also suggest that the distribution of giant sauropods was more complicated than the fossil record previously indicated.

"More complete specimens will be essential to understand this story in greater detail, particularly to determine which Diplodocus species inhabited Europe: whether it was one already known from North America or a previously unknown species," Sánchez Fenollosa said. "This discovery reminds us that even for such iconic dinosaurs, there are still many unanswered questions about their evolutionary history and biogeography."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'Behemoth star,' previously thought to be dying, is 'rising from the ashes' like a phoenix ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/behemoth-star-previously-thought-to-be-dying-is-rising-from-the-ashes-like-a-pheonix + <![CDATA[ 'That could push them over the edge': How climate change could fuel impulsive behavior ]]> + Climate change is often discussed in terms of rising temperatures, extreme weather and environmental loss. But there's another consequence that can be harder to see: The impact on our mental health.

In this exclusive video, we explore how heat exposure influences mental state, drawing on research by Kim Meidenbauer, a neuroscientist at Washington State University who studies the effect of heat on emotion and behavior.

Editor's Note: This text was updated at 12:30 p.m. EDT to correct the spelling of Kim Meidenbauer's name.

Burning up: How can we adapt to a warming world?

As the planet warms, our environment will be transformed, but so will our bodies. This video is part of a series where we investigate the health impacts of climate change, focusing on heat, air quality, food and infection risk. We also evaluate the promising solutions that could help us adapt to our warmer future.

A collage of people dealing with extreme heat over a white background

Climate change will triple the number of days over 105 F in the US. The health impacts will be dire.

Extreme heat will become more common as the climate continues to warm. That will affect almost every facet of our health.

A collage of several images of people wearing masks with wildfire raging below them.

'Wildfire smoke is the fastest-growing environmental threat in the US': How a warming world will poison the air we breathe

Wildfires are projected to increase dramatically due to climate change. That could trigger a massive increase in heart attacks, premature births and early deaths, research reveals.

A collage of farming and people holding food.

'The apple you eat isn't the apple your granddaughter will eat': What's on the menu in a warming world?

Almost every aspect of our food system will be transformed by climate change.

 ]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/that-could-push-them-over-the-edge-how-climate-change-could-fuel-impulsive-behavior - + - mfhPh9EcFKCPYCNSUKfAYE - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:56:34 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:41:15 +0000 - - - - - - + a7DcD4HnPFnMqiUADabnge + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:52:48 +0000 Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:38:38 +0000 + + + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +

Climate change is often discussed in terms of rising temperatures, extreme weather and environmental loss. But there's another consequence that can be harder to see: The impact on our mental health.

In this exclusive video, we explore how heat exposure influences mental state, drawing on research by Kim Meidenbauer, a neuroscientist at Washington State University who studies the effect of heat on emotion and behavior.

Editor's Note: This text was updated at 12:30 p.m. EDT to correct the spelling of Kim Meidenbauer's name.

Burning up: How can we adapt to a warming world?

As the planet warms, our environment will be transformed, but so will our bodies. This video is part of a series where we investigate the health impacts of climate change, focusing on heat, air quality, food and infection risk. We also evaluate the promising solutions that could help us adapt to our warmer future.

A collage of people dealing with extreme heat over a white background

Climate change will triple the number of days over 105 F in the US. The health impacts will be dire.

Extreme heat will become more common as the climate continues to warm. That will affect almost every facet of our health.

A collage of several images of people wearing masks with wildfire raging below them.

'Wildfire smoke is the fastest-growing environmental threat in the US': How a warming world will poison the air we breathe

Wildfires are projected to increase dramatically due to climate change. That could trigger a massive increase in heart attacks, premature births and early deaths, research reveals.

A collage of farming and people holding food.

'The apple you eat isn't the apple your granddaughter will eat': What's on the menu in a warming world?

Almost every aspect of our food system will be transformed by climate change.

 + + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ New map shows weird magnetic anomaly lurking beneath Australia's Northern Territory ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/new-map-shows-weird-magnetic-anomaly-lurking-beneath-australias-northern-territory + <![CDATA[ Peculiar land bridge separates a pair of colorful lakes in Patagonia — Earth from space ]]> +
QUICK FACTS

Where is it? Lake Pueyrredón and Lake Posadas, Argentina [-47.41961002, -71.87622200]

What's in the photo? The point where two different-colored lakes meet

Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut on board the International Space Station

When was it taken? Sept. 15, 2020

This eye-catching astronaut photo shows the point where an ancient Patagonian lake has been split by a peculiar land bridge, creating two contrastingly colored bodies of water.

Lake Pueyrredón (on the left in the photo) is the Argentine half of a roughly 40-mile-long (65 kilometers) glacial lake, which stretches across the country's border with Chile in Patagonia — a region in South America that is well known for its diverse range of geographic features, including mountains, fjords, deserts and rainforests. The Chilean half of the lake is known as Lake Cochrane (not shown in this image). Both halves hold crystal-clear water that is up to 1,600 feet (500 meters) deep, giving Pueyrredón a deep blue hue when viewed from above.

Thousands of years ago, a thick sediment barrier formed across the southern section of Lake Pueyrredón, creating a new body of water known as Lake Posadas. This smaller body, which is roughly 5 miles (8 km) long, has a lighter, teal color due to its shallow water and a large influx of sediment from a nearby river, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Other rivers from nearby hills have previously dumped large quantities of sediment along the western shore of Lake Pueyrredón (bottom of the photo), creating a trio of fan-shaped landforms, known as deltas, that increase in size from north to south (left to right in the photo).

Wind-driven currents and waves have pushed some of this sediment from the outer edges of the two smaller deltas, creating long, thin strips of land, known as sandspits, pointing down-current.

A photo of the lakes and the land bridge that separates them, taken from ground level

This image, snapped from the banks of Lake Posadas, shows a close-up view of the rocky barrier that formed across Lake Pueyrredón thousands of years ago. (Image credit: Prisma Bildagentur/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The strip of land separating Pueyrredón and Posadas looks similar to the sandspits. However, it is most likely a moraine — a barrier of sediment and larger rocks that formed along the edge of a hefty iceberg or long-lost glacier, according to the Earth Observatory.

Eagle-eyed viewers may be able to spot a narrow airstrip on the smallest delta (running almost parallel with its sandspit). While the area is largely uninhabited, it is popular with tourists, who travel to the lakes to camp, hike, fish and kayak, according to a local travel site.

Lake Posadas is also home to a unique island with a massive rocky arch (see below) that is also popular with tourists.

A photo of a car wingmirror showing Lake Posadas and its famous rocky arch reflected in the mirror

This photo, captured in the side-view mirror of a tourist's car, shows the famous rocky arch in Lake Posadas. (Image credit: alextorrenegra via Wikimedia)

The two lakes in the astronaut photo sit within a large valley, which was carved by a massive ice sheet that once covered the area. The last remnants of this ice sheet are located in northern Patagonia, around 20 miles (30 km) west of Lake Cochrane, and have also been snapped from space by astronauts.

Patagonia is home to dozens of similar valleys and fjords that were carved out by the same massive ice slab. Around 210 miles (340 km) southwest of Pueyrredón and Posadas, a trio of ravines converge to create a rare configuration where a lake, river and glacier "touch" each other at a single point.

See more Earth from space

Satellite photo showing a lake bisecting the snowy edge of a gray ridged glacier

Mini lake meets massive glacier

A 2010 satellite photo shows the point where a small lake bisects the snowy rim of an ancient glacier on Canada's Baffin Island. The rippling, snow-rimmed structure is the last remaining fragment of a colossal ice sheet that once covered large parts of North America.

A satellite photo of multiple stripy glaciers merging into a single ice mass

Trio of 'battleground' glaciers merge

This 2023 astronaut photo shows three glaciers merging into a single massive ice mass in the Karakoram mountains. The stripy glaciers have gained ice in recent decades, despite the effects of human-caused climate change.

An astronaut photo of a section of a lake half covered in fracturing ice

World's highest frozen lake shatters

A 2024 astronaut photo shows the icy surface of Pangong Lake breaking apart in the lofty Tibetan Plateau. The point where the ice meets the water almost perfectly matches a disputed border between China and India.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/peculiar-land-bridge-separates-a-pair-of-colorful-lakes-in-patagonia-earth-from-space - + - b2BbnESZvkZjXpLDfD7S3J - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:52:20 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:47:03 +0000 - + SHiWcNvmd5kfuvT87UyagN + + Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:47:33 +0000 Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:06:59 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + + + + + +
QUICK FACTS

Where is it? Lake Pueyrredón and Lake Posadas, Argentina [-47.41961002, -71.87622200]

What's in the photo? The point where two different-colored lakes meet

Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut on board the International Space Station

When was it taken? Sept. 15, 2020

This eye-catching astronaut photo shows the point where an ancient Patagonian lake has been split by a peculiar land bridge, creating two contrastingly colored bodies of water.

Lake Pueyrredón (on the left in the photo) is the Argentine half of a roughly 40-mile-long (65 kilometers) glacial lake, which stretches across the country's border with Chile in Patagonia — a region in South America that is well known for its diverse range of geographic features, including mountains, fjords, deserts and rainforests. The Chilean half of the lake is known as Lake Cochrane (not shown in this image). Both halves hold crystal-clear water that is up to 1,600 feet (500 meters) deep, giving Pueyrredón a deep blue hue when viewed from above.

Thousands of years ago, a thick sediment barrier formed across the southern section of Lake Pueyrredón, creating a new body of water known as Lake Posadas. This smaller body, which is roughly 5 miles (8 km) long, has a lighter, teal color due to its shallow water and a large influx of sediment from a nearby river, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Other rivers from nearby hills have previously dumped large quantities of sediment along the western shore of Lake Pueyrredón (bottom of the photo), creating a trio of fan-shaped landforms, known as deltas, that increase in size from north to south (left to right in the photo).

Wind-driven currents and waves have pushed some of this sediment from the outer edges of the two smaller deltas, creating long, thin strips of land, known as sandspits, pointing down-current.

A photo of the lakes and the land bridge that separates them, taken from ground level

This image, snapped from the banks of Lake Posadas, shows a close-up view of the rocky barrier that formed across Lake Pueyrredón thousands of years ago. (Image credit: Prisma Bildagentur/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The strip of land separating Pueyrredón and Posadas looks similar to the sandspits. However, it is most likely a moraine — a barrier of sediment and larger rocks that formed along the edge of a hefty iceberg or long-lost glacier, according to the Earth Observatory.

Eagle-eyed viewers may be able to spot a narrow airstrip on the smallest delta (running almost parallel with its sandspit). While the area is largely uninhabited, it is popular with tourists, who travel to the lakes to camp, hike, fish and kayak, according to a local travel site.

Lake Posadas is also home to a unique island with a massive rocky arch (see below) that is also popular with tourists.

A photo of a car wingmirror showing Lake Posadas and its famous rocky arch reflected in the mirror

This photo, captured in the side-view mirror of a tourist's car, shows the famous rocky arch in Lake Posadas. (Image credit: alextorrenegra via Wikimedia)

The two lakes in the astronaut photo sit within a large valley, which was carved by a massive ice sheet that once covered the area. The last remnants of this ice sheet are located in northern Patagonia, around 20 miles (30 km) west of Lake Cochrane, and have also been snapped from space by astronauts.

Patagonia is home to dozens of similar valleys and fjords that were carved out by the same massive ice slab. Around 210 miles (340 km) southwest of Pueyrredón and Posadas, a trio of ravines converge to create a rare configuration where a lake, river and glacier "touch" each other at a single point.

See more Earth from space

Satellite photo showing a lake bisecting the snowy edge of a gray ridged glacier

Mini lake meets massive glacier

A 2010 satellite photo shows the point where a small lake bisects the snowy rim of an ancient glacier on Canada's Baffin Island. The rippling, snow-rimmed structure is the last remaining fragment of a colossal ice sheet that once covered large parts of North America.

A satellite photo of multiple stripy glaciers merging into a single ice mass

Trio of 'battleground' glaciers merge

This 2023 astronaut photo shows three glaciers merging into a single massive ice mass in the Karakoram mountains. The stripy glaciers have gained ice in recent decades, despite the effects of human-caused climate change.

An astronaut photo of a section of a lake half covered in fracturing ice

World's highest frozen lake shatters

A 2024 astronaut photo shows the icy surface of Pangong Lake breaking apart in the lofty Tibetan Plateau. The point where the ice meets the water almost perfectly matches a disputed border between China and India.

+ + ]]> + + + + <![CDATA[ South American 'Pompeii': Volcanic eruption 22 million years ago preserved a snapshot of the Andes forming ]]> + A volcanic eruption 22 million years ago froze a snapshot of the Andes in their youth, revealing a slow-and-steady formation of this formidable mountain range.

The eruption, which originated from the Lauca Caldera in what is now northern Chile, blanketed the landscape in a formation known as ignimbrite. This rock is left over after a pyroclastic flow ‪—‬ a mix of rock, volcanic gas and ash that sweeps over the landscape like a broiling tsunami. Pyroclastic flow is what buried the Roman town of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, preserving buildings and people where they fell.

Now, a new study published Sept. 11 in the journal Science Advances extrapolates the landscape under this Andean ignimbrite, revealing that it must have buried rolling foothills rather than craggy peaks.

"Pompeii shows how volcanic eruptions can freeze a moment in human history," Byron Adams, a geomorphologist at University College London, said in a statement. "This study shows that much larger eruptions can also freeze moments in Earth history, burying whole landscapes beneath volcanic deposits and preserving clues to how mountains were being built before the eruption. We cannot dig down to see the buried landscape, but we can use the shape of the volcanic blanket and what we know about how rivers shape mountains to infer what is hidden beneath it."

Volcano deposits, known as ignimbrite, that were incised by the Lluta River in northern Chile. (Image credit: Frances J. Cooper)

The original slope of the volcanic flow from Lauca Caldera was about 1.5 degrees, Adams and his colleagues wrote in the new paper. The researchers also calculated the erosion of the landscape to figure out how fast the rocks in the area were rising as the oceanic Nazca Plate pushed under the continental crust of South America, which is how the Andes were built.

Related stories

They found that prior to the eruption, the uplift of the crust was no more than 0.16 mile (0.26 kilometer) per million years — quite a sluggish process. This finding corresponds to earlier work that used the formation of certain minerals within rocks to determine when a particular rock rose through the crust and approached the surface.

"There is debate over whether the Andes grew slowly and steadily over 40 or 50 million years or whether they rose extremely slowly and then popped up more recently, in the last six to 10 million years," Adams said. "Our findings, which cover a large part of the middle of that history, support the slow but steady hypothesis."

The same method could be applied to other mountain ranges worldwide, the researchers added.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanoes/south-american-pompeii-volcanic-eruption-22-million-years-ago-preserved-a-snapshot-of-the-andes-forming + + + + 4djxpMuNy6j7c65UJsSJm3 + + Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:51:07 +0000 - - - - + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

A volcanic eruption 22 million years ago froze a snapshot of the Andes in their youth, revealing a slow-and-steady formation of this formidable mountain range.

The eruption, which originated from the Lauca Caldera in what is now northern Chile, blanketed the landscape in a formation known as ignimbrite. This rock is left over after a pyroclastic flow ‪—‬ a mix of rock, volcanic gas and ash that sweeps over the landscape like a broiling tsunami. Pyroclastic flow is what buried the Roman town of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, preserving buildings and people where they fell.

Now, a new study published Sept. 11 in the journal Science Advances extrapolates the landscape under this Andean ignimbrite, revealing that it must have buried rolling foothills rather than craggy peaks.

"Pompeii shows how volcanic eruptions can freeze a moment in human history," Byron Adams, a geomorphologist at University College London, said in a statement. "This study shows that much larger eruptions can also freeze moments in Earth history, burying whole landscapes beneath volcanic deposits and preserving clues to how mountains were being built before the eruption. We cannot dig down to see the buried landscape, but we can use the shape of the volcanic blanket and what we know about how rivers shape mountains to infer what is hidden beneath it."

Volcano deposits, known as ignimbrite, that were incised by the Lluta River in northern Chile. (Image credit: Frances J. Cooper)

The original slope of the volcanic flow from Lauca Caldera was about 1.5 degrees, Adams and his colleagues wrote in the new paper. The researchers also calculated the erosion of the landscape to figure out how fast the rocks in the area were rising as the oceanic Nazca Plate pushed under the continental crust of South America, which is how the Andes were built.

Related stories

They found that prior to the eruption, the uplift of the crust was no more than 0.16 mile (0.26 kilometer) per million years — quite a sluggish process. This finding corresponds to earlier work that used the formation of certain minerals within rocks to determine when a particular rock rose through the crust and approached the surface.

"There is debate over whether the Andes grew slowly and steadily over 40 or 50 million years or whether they rose extremely slowly and then popped up more recently, in the last six to 10 million years," Adams said. "Our findings, which cover a large part of the middle of that history, support the slow but steady hypothesis."

The same method could be applied to other mountain ranges worldwide, the researchers added.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'Nitrogen fixing' trees could help tropical forests bounce back, research suggests ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/nitrogen-fixing-trees-could-help-tropical-forests-bounce-back-research-suggests + <![CDATA[ We now have an incredibly detailed map to help predict which areas of LA are the most at risk from 'The Big One' ]]> + Scientists have a new view of the ground under Los Angeles, and it's a bit shaky.

The 3D model of the Los Angeles basin shows that downtown LA is underpinned by up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of sediment, which will likely amplify shaking from any earthquake that hits the region. That's not entirely new information, but the underground map is more precise than ever before, and it should help earthquake scientists better understand which areas of the city are most vulnerable.

"With this improved model of the basin, we now know the shape of the edges of the basin in a lot more detail," Elizabeth Cochran, a U.S. Geological Survey seismologist who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.

That's important, Cochran said, because irregular edges can focus or direct earthquake waves. In the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994, Santa Monica experienced more shaking damage than expected because of the way the seismic waves traveled along the basin edge, she added.

Los Angeles sits in a sedimentary basin, a low spot where layers of sediment have accumulated for at least 15 million years. At first, the basin was underwater, so the lowest layers of these sediments were oceanic sediments. Later, when tectonic forces brought the basin onto dry land, additional sediment accumulated from the mountains nearby.

Researchers knew the general shape of the basin, but not in great detail. "Previous surveys were just linear arrays that went through just one cross section on the LA Basin, but this was the first full three-dimensional map," said Valeria Villa, a doctoral student at Caltech and co-author of the new paper describing the map, published Aug. 4 in the journal JGR Solid Earth.

A 3D printed model of the LA Basin.

A 3D-printed model of the LA sedimentary basin. (Image credit: Valeria Villa/Caltech)

The data from the new map came from 273 temporary seismic stations deployed around LA. These stations detected faint earthquake waves from distant quakes that couldn't be felt by humans. The paths and timing of these waves as they traveled helped researchers build a 3D map of the rock layers below the surface.

The central part of the basin, under downtown LA, holds the deepest sediments, which could amplify shaking. The edges of the basin are thinner, with 0.6 to 2.5 miles (1 to 4 km) of sediment before the hard crystalline rock that serves as the basin's bottom.

On its own, the map doesn't tell geophysicists exactly where shaking might be the worst in the case of a big LA earthquake, but researchers can now update their models and simulations to test different scenarios, Villa told Live Science. The damage will ultimately depend on a lot of factors, such as which fault causes the quake. Los Angeles is surrounded by many faults, including the famous San Andreas, which could give off a magnitude 7.8 quake that would jolt Southern California.

Related stories

One important factor in the amount of damage to buildings during such a quake is "resonance" ‪—‬ whether buildings shake in time with the sediments below them, Cochran said. When buildings and sediments are in resonance, the damage is worse. A better understanding of the sediment layers beneath downtown LA will help researchers ensure buildings are designed to avoid resonating with the shaking basin, she said.

"You can, for example, change the stiffness of your building and do other things to offset this effect," Cochran said. "What is important is that you know what the ground is like, and what the larger geologic structure is like, underneath the region where you are building the building to know that this could be an issue."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/earthquakes/we-now-have-an-incredibly-detailed-map-to-help-predict-which-areas-of-la-are-the-most-at-risk-from-the-big-one - + - 83t8swdnTw6ZdjHGY6dTia - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:31:10 +0000 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:58:51 +0000 - + WXxqQ4SLVffrXL756rpSKd + + Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:49:56 +0000 - - - - + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Scientists have a new view of the ground under Los Angeles, and it's a bit shaky.

The 3D model of the Los Angeles basin shows that downtown LA is underpinned by up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of sediment, which will likely amplify shaking from any earthquake that hits the region. That's not entirely new information, but the underground map is more precise than ever before, and it should help earthquake scientists better understand which areas of the city are most vulnerable.

"With this improved model of the basin, we now know the shape of the edges of the basin in a lot more detail," Elizabeth Cochran, a U.S. Geological Survey seismologist who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.

That's important, Cochran said, because irregular edges can focus or direct earthquake waves. In the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994, Santa Monica experienced more shaking damage than expected because of the way the seismic waves traveled along the basin edge, she added.

Los Angeles sits in a sedimentary basin, a low spot where layers of sediment have accumulated for at least 15 million years. At first, the basin was underwater, so the lowest layers of these sediments were oceanic sediments. Later, when tectonic forces brought the basin onto dry land, additional sediment accumulated from the mountains nearby.

Researchers knew the general shape of the basin, but not in great detail. "Previous surveys were just linear arrays that went through just one cross section on the LA Basin, but this was the first full three-dimensional map," said Valeria Villa, a doctoral student at Caltech and co-author of the new paper describing the map, published Aug. 4 in the journal JGR Solid Earth.

A 3D printed model of the LA Basin.

A 3D-printed model of the LA sedimentary basin. (Image credit: Valeria Villa/Caltech)

The data from the new map came from 273 temporary seismic stations deployed around LA. These stations detected faint earthquake waves from distant quakes that couldn't be felt by humans. The paths and timing of these waves as they traveled helped researchers build a 3D map of the rock layers below the surface.

The central part of the basin, under downtown LA, holds the deepest sediments, which could amplify shaking. The edges of the basin are thinner, with 0.6 to 2.5 miles (1 to 4 km) of sediment before the hard crystalline rock that serves as the basin's bottom.

On its own, the map doesn't tell geophysicists exactly where shaking might be the worst in the case of a big LA earthquake, but researchers can now update their models and simulations to test different scenarios, Villa told Live Science. The damage will ultimately depend on a lot of factors, such as which fault causes the quake. Los Angeles is surrounded by many faults, including the famous San Andreas, which could give off a magnitude 7.8 quake that would jolt Southern California.

Related stories

One important factor in the amount of damage to buildings during such a quake is "resonance" ‪—‬ whether buildings shake in time with the sediments below them, Cochran said. When buildings and sediments are in resonance, the damage is worse. A better understanding of the sediment layers beneath downtown LA will help researchers ensure buildings are designed to avoid resonating with the shaking basin, she said.

"You can, for example, change the stiffness of your building and do other things to offset this effect," Cochran said. "What is important is that you know what the ground is like, and what the larger geologic structure is like, underneath the region where you are building the building to know that this could be an issue."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Swarovski NL Pure 8x32 binoculars review ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/technology/swarovski-nl-pure-8x32-binoculars-review + <![CDATA[ Ancestral commemorative head: A 500-year-old brass bust depicting an African king ]]> +

This brass head depicts an "oba," or ruler of the Kingdom of Benin. (Image credit: Cleveland Museum of Art (Public Domain))
Quick facts

Name: Ancestral commemorative head

What it is: A copper-alloy sculpture of an African ruler's head

Where it is from: Edo, Nigeria

When it was made: Mid-1500s

In the Kingdom of Benin, one of the oldest monarchies in West Africa, a traditional ruler known as an oba would commission a brass or bronze bust of their predecessor upon taking the throne. The bust of the past oba would then be set on an ancestral altar in the palace. But when the British Empire annexed the Kingdom of Benin into colonial Nigeria in 1897, the British looted thousands of African artifacts spanning the kingdom's seven-century history, and the country of Nigeria has asked that they be returned.

This particular bust is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), which acquired it from prominent French art dealer Louis Carré, who sold many of the artifacts looted from Benin to Western museums in the 1930s. This head of an oba ancestor, also known as "uhunmwun-elao" in the Edo language spoken in the historic Kingdom of Benin, is roughly 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall and was made from a copper alloy, using a lost-wax casting process that would produce one unique bust, then-CMA curator William Milliken wrote in a 1937 study.

Initially, CMA experts thought the ancestral head represented a princess, due to the layers of coral necklaces around the oba's neck and the thin braids hanging from the individual's temples. But the coral necklaces and the lattice-pattern beaded caps were actually potent representations of a ruler's power. The top of the bust is partly open, and it would have supported an intricately carved elephant tusk that recorded the oba's accomplishments and major life events.

Many of the surviving ancestral commemorative heads were created in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Igun Eronmwon, a hereditary guild of brass and bronze artisans that made objects for royalty in the Kingdom of Benin. According to the CMA, Benin royalty prized brass because it does not corrode. Much of the African brass was imported from as far away as Germany.

When British forces invaded the Benin royal palace in 1897, they looted thousands of metal plaques, sculptures of humans and animal figures, and royal and personal ornaments that have come to be known as the Benin Bronzes, even though most of the objects are technically brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. The British Museum holds the world's largest collection of Benin brass artifacts — over 900 objects — which Nigeria formally requested be returned in 2021.

Some institutions have begun repatriating this historic royal art back to its homeland. A group of German museums that collectively held over 1,100 of these objects transferred ownership of them to Nigeria in 2022. That same year, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art transferred ownership of 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. And, in 2025, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. To date, however, the British Museum has not officially returned any of the Benin Bronzes in its collection.

There is also controversy about who should have ownership of these artifacts. In 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston returned two Benin Bronzes to Oba Ewuare II, the great-great-grandson of the last oba before the 1897 British invasion. Oba Ewuare II is the Oba of Benin and custodian of Benin culture.

A full catalog of royal artifacts looted from Benin in the late 19th century can be found on the Digital Benin project website.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

a gold and garnet crown against an orange background

Kerch Crown

This crown depicts two birds of prey and was discovered in the grave of a fifth-century noblewoman in Crimea.

a carved portrait of a Maya queen with an orange background

Lady K'abel Stela

This monumental carving depicts a powerful Maya queen called Lady K'abel, who ruled an ancient city in Guatemala at the end of the seventh century.

a coil-built pot that tapers from the top and has stylized flames around the rim, against an orange background

Fire Flame Vessel

Archaeologists aren't sure why prehistoric people in Japan made these elaborate vessels decorated with flames.

Can you put together last week's Astonishing Artifact?

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancestral-commemorative-head-a-500-year-old-brass-bust-depicting-an-african-king - + - ejydrVEZwcdJHoms53zuT8 - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:30:00 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:23:26 +0000 - - - - - + PN2qhuYebE7YK7gfHCczAk + + Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:06:14 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

This brass head depicts an "oba," or ruler of the Kingdom of Benin. (Image credit: Cleveland Museum of Art (Public Domain))
Quick facts

Name: Ancestral commemorative head

What it is: A copper-alloy sculpture of an African ruler's head

Where it is from: Edo, Nigeria

When it was made: Mid-1500s

In the Kingdom of Benin, one of the oldest monarchies in West Africa, a traditional ruler known as an oba would commission a brass or bronze bust of their predecessor upon taking the throne. The bust of the past oba would then be set on an ancestral altar in the palace. But when the British Empire annexed the Kingdom of Benin into colonial Nigeria in 1897, the British looted thousands of African artifacts spanning the kingdom's seven-century history, and the country of Nigeria has asked that they be returned.

This particular bust is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), which acquired it from prominent French art dealer Louis Carré, who sold many of the artifacts looted from Benin to Western museums in the 1930s. This head of an oba ancestor, also known as "uhunmwun-elao" in the Edo language spoken in the historic Kingdom of Benin, is roughly 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall and was made from a copper alloy, using a lost-wax casting process that would produce one unique bust, then-CMA curator William Milliken wrote in a 1937 study.

Initially, CMA experts thought the ancestral head represented a princess, due to the layers of coral necklaces around the oba's neck and the thin braids hanging from the individual's temples. But the coral necklaces and the lattice-pattern beaded caps were actually potent representations of a ruler's power. The top of the bust is partly open, and it would have supported an intricately carved elephant tusk that recorded the oba's accomplishments and major life events.

Many of the surviving ancestral commemorative heads were created in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Igun Eronmwon, a hereditary guild of brass and bronze artisans that made objects for royalty in the Kingdom of Benin. According to the CMA, Benin royalty prized brass because it does not corrode. Much of the African brass was imported from as far away as Germany.

When British forces invaded the Benin royal palace in 1897, they looted thousands of metal plaques, sculptures of humans and animal figures, and royal and personal ornaments that have come to be known as the Benin Bronzes, even though most of the objects are technically brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. The British Museum holds the world's largest collection of Benin brass artifacts — over 900 objects — which Nigeria formally requested be returned in 2021.

Some institutions have begun repatriating this historic royal art back to its homeland. A group of German museums that collectively held over 1,100 of these objects transferred ownership of them to Nigeria in 2022. That same year, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art transferred ownership of 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. And, in 2025, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. To date, however, the British Museum has not officially returned any of the Benin Bronzes in its collection.

There is also controversy about who should have ownership of these artifacts. In 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston returned two Benin Bronzes to Oba Ewuare II, the great-great-grandson of the last oba before the 1897 British invasion. Oba Ewuare II is the Oba of Benin and custodian of Benin culture.

A full catalog of royal artifacts looted from Benin in the late 19th century can be found on the Digital Benin project website.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

a gold and garnet crown against an orange background

Kerch Crown

This crown depicts two birds of prey and was discovered in the grave of a fifth-century noblewoman in Crimea.

a carved portrait of a Maya queen with an orange background

Lady K'abel Stela

This monumental carving depicts a powerful Maya queen called Lady K'abel, who ruled an ancient city in Guatemala at the end of the seventh century.

a coil-built pot that tapers from the top and has stylized flames around the rim, against an orange background

Fire Flame Vessel

Archaeologists aren't sure why prehistoric people in Japan made these elaborate vessels decorated with flames.

Can you put together last week's Astonishing Artifact?

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Diagnostic dilemma: Man's autopsy reveals unexpected 'boomerang-shaped' structure in his heart ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/heart-circulation/diagnostic-dilemma-mans-autopsy-reveals-unexpected-boomerang-shaped-structure-in-his-heart + <![CDATA[ Does estrogen protect against dementia? And if so, who should take it? ]]> + In women's reproductive years, their brains are exposed to high levels of sex hormones, and their neurons may come to depend on those hormones to function optimally. But leading up to and after menopause, the ovaries produce far less estrogen and progesterone, raising concerns that this drop in hormones may contribute to women's dementia risk.

"We think that the loss of those hormones at menopause renders those neurons more vulnerable to age-related cellular decline and pathologies like Alzheimer's," said Karyn Frick, a neuroscientist and professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

So, if falling hormone levels are a risk factor for dementia, could replacing those hormones help stave off the disease?

While the idea sounds logical on its face, studies that have looked at hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for dementia prevention have had mixed results. There are early hints that restoring estrogen during early menopause may protect brain health, but ultimately, more gold-standard clinical trials are needed to know for sure, experts told Live Science.

Support for estrogen protecting the brain

The idea that estrogen could help ward off dementia is plausible. Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than men are, and scientists think the loss of estrogen during menopause may be partly to blame, said Jennifer Bruno, an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Lab and animal studies buttress the idea that estrogen could protect brain health.

In the brain, estrogens act as neuromodulators, or chemical messengers that alter how neurons behave. Estrogen also helps neurons keep their shape. Estrogen loss in female mice triggers a drop in the number of dendritic spines ‪—‬ the small, bud-like bumps on neurons that receive chemical messages.

An estrogen molecule. The body's levels of estrogen fluctuate in perimenopause, and they then dramatically decline and level off during and after menopause. (Image credit: theasis via Getty Images)

Researchers think that estrogen may help prevent the formation of the abnormal proteins — including one called amyloid beta — that accumulate, disrupt communication between neurons and ultimately kill cells in Alzheimer's disease. Amyloid beta is produced when a larger protein is cut the "wrong" way by an enzyme, Frick explained. Estrogen promotes the "normal" cutting of this protein, thus reducing amyloid beta, studies in lab mice show.

And estrogen may limit the buildup of a second Alzheimer's-related protein, called tau, by preventing the chemical processes that cause the tau proteins to clump together. This helps prevent the formation of tau tangles, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

The hormone may also support brain health indirectly by improving sleep quality.

"It's well documented that menopausal women have difficulty sleeping, whether it's due to hot flashes or insomnia," Frick said. Estrogen can ease those nighttime hot flashes, thus helping menopausal women get more, less-fragmented sleep. Deep rest may help the brain clean out toxic proteins, while research shows sleep deficiency is linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Mixed results with estrogen-only HRT

HRT for menopause comes in two main forms: treatments that include only estrogen, and combined therapies with both estrogen and progesterone. The treatment has a complicated history.

HRT was popular in the 1990s but fell out of favor after results from the Women's Health Initiative study were published in 2002. That study identified various risks tied to both estrogen-only and combined HRT options, some of which have since been overturned by newer data.

That said, the Women's Health Initiative study found that estrogen-only HRT came with an increased risk of endometrial cancers, and later analyses have backed up this idea. That's why today, clinical guidelines recommend that women who have not gotten a hysterectomy take combined HRT, while estrogen-only options are reserved for those who have had their uterus removed. (The added progesterone counteracts estrogen's thickening effect on the uterine lining.)

For the subset of women who take estrogen-only HRT, observational data published in August showed that this form of the treatment was linked to a reduced risk of dementia. The study, published in the journal Neurology, found that women who took estrogen-only HRT were less likely to show Alzheimer's-related changes in the brain than women who didn't take any HRT.

Laboratory data suggest that estrogen may help prevent the formation and accumulation of abnormal proteins that are related to Alzheimer's. (Image credit: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

Estrogen-only HRT was also tied to better clinical outcomes: Treated women were less likely to be diagnosed with dementia, were less likely to show clinical and functional cognitive decline, and had better scores on memory tests, on average, compared with untreated women. These findings drew on two large, separate groups of older women, reporting data from 21,400 people in total, but they didn't include data on when each woman started HRT.

Whereas earlier studies of HRT and dementia risk relied on doctors' ratings of patients' symptoms, the Neurology study measured levels of Alzheimer's-related proteins in the brain after death. That's a more "definitive" marker of disease, said Bruno, a co-author of the study. However, the research was observational, so it can't say whether estrogen-only HRT directly causes the better brain outcomes the team observed, she stressed.

Although the Neurology study's findings are promising, they don't necessarily match the results of other studies of estrogen-only HRT and dementia. For example, a slightly larger observational study, published in 2023, found that estrogen-only HRT was associated with an increased dementia rate.

In that research, most of the women took a type of estrogen called estradiol, while Bruno's study included a greater variety of estrogens. That may have been the difference in the two studies' results, but teasing that out would require further study. Meanwhile, the conflicting findings muddy the waters of what estrogen-only HRT can do for brain health.

Does timing matter?

One big finding from the Women's Health Initiative study was that starting HRT — either estrogen-only or combined — after age 65 was associated with worse cognitive function and increased dementia risk, said Yuko Hara, director of aging and Alzheimer's prevention at the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation.

The same may not be true for people who start HRT earlier. For context, menopause starts around age 51 to 52, on average, and it's preceded by perimenopause, a transitional period when hormone levels begin to drop, typically around the mid-40s.

An observational study published in August in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia found that starting HRT between ages 46 and 56 was linked to a reduced risk of dementia. That study did not differentiate between estrogen-only and combined treatment; it lumped all of the data together.

A close up of a person putting a patch on their arm.

Patches (pictured) are one form of systemic HRT. They deliver hormones through the skin and into the bloodstream. (Image credit: SVPhilon via Getty Images)

The protective link was especially strong in three groups: women with "surgical menopause," triggered by the removal of one or both ovaries; carriers of a certain variant of a gene called APOE that raises Alzheimer's risk; and women who had a relatively short time between their first period and menopause.

A 2024 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials also found that HRT had a cognitive benefit for women with surgical menopause; that finding was tied mostly to estrogen-only therapies.

However, outside of that specific group, the idea of early HRT protecting brain health is far from settled.

Who might benefit, if anyone?

Related stories

When it comes to using hormone replacement to protect brain health, the evidence isn't yet strong enough to recommend any kind of HRT as a way to protect the brain in all women, Hara said. Women who had one or both of their ovaries surgically removed are the exception to this rule.

"This is a distinct clinical population because the procedure can cause an abrupt, early loss of estrogen, rather than the gradual hormonal decline that occurs with natural menopause," Hara said.

For most women who have gone through natural menopause, "there is not enough evidence to recommend [HRT] specifically for preventing cognitive decline or dementia," she said.

HRT is not currently prescribed to prevent dementia — it is prescribed to ease menopause symptoms, such as hot flashes, night sweats and sleep disturbances. To settle the science on HRT and the brain, what's really needed is a well-designed clinical trial that follows women from perimenopause to postmenopause, Bruno said. That would reveal the effects of HRT on brain health and dementia risk more reliably than the studies done so far.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/alzheimers-dementia/does-estrogen-protect-against-dementia-and-if-so-who-should-take-it - + - GACxwoEVuYj6YWcZd875jR - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:46:01 +0000 - + GcKNQAdzaySdKXpCnBL9B6 + + Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:08:28 +0000 + - - - - + + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +

In women's reproductive years, their brains are exposed to high levels of sex hormones, and their neurons may come to depend on those hormones to function optimally. But leading up to and after menopause, the ovaries produce far less estrogen and progesterone, raising concerns that this drop in hormones may contribute to women's dementia risk.

"We think that the loss of those hormones at menopause renders those neurons more vulnerable to age-related cellular decline and pathologies like Alzheimer's," said Karyn Frick, a neuroscientist and professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

So, if falling hormone levels are a risk factor for dementia, could replacing those hormones help stave off the disease?

While the idea sounds logical on its face, studies that have looked at hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for dementia prevention have had mixed results. There are early hints that restoring estrogen during early menopause may protect brain health, but ultimately, more gold-standard clinical trials are needed to know for sure, experts told Live Science.

Support for estrogen protecting the brain

The idea that estrogen could help ward off dementia is plausible. Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than men are, and scientists think the loss of estrogen during menopause may be partly to blame, said Jennifer Bruno, an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Lab and animal studies buttress the idea that estrogen could protect brain health.

In the brain, estrogens act as neuromodulators, or chemical messengers that alter how neurons behave. Estrogen also helps neurons keep their shape. Estrogen loss in female mice triggers a drop in the number of dendritic spines ‪—‬ the small, bud-like bumps on neurons that receive chemical messages.

An estrogen molecule. The body's levels of estrogen fluctuate in perimenopause, and they then dramatically decline and level off during and after menopause. (Image credit: theasis via Getty Images)

Researchers think that estrogen may help prevent the formation of the abnormal proteins — including one called amyloid beta — that accumulate, disrupt communication between neurons and ultimately kill cells in Alzheimer's disease. Amyloid beta is produced when a larger protein is cut the "wrong" way by an enzyme, Frick explained. Estrogen promotes the "normal" cutting of this protein, thus reducing amyloid beta, studies in lab mice show.

And estrogen may limit the buildup of a second Alzheimer's-related protein, called tau, by preventing the chemical processes that cause the tau proteins to clump together. This helps prevent the formation of tau tangles, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

The hormone may also support brain health indirectly by improving sleep quality.

"It's well documented that menopausal women have difficulty sleeping, whether it's due to hot flashes or insomnia," Frick said. Estrogen can ease those nighttime hot flashes, thus helping menopausal women get more, less-fragmented sleep. Deep rest may help the brain clean out toxic proteins, while research shows sleep deficiency is linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Mixed results with estrogen-only HRT

HRT for menopause comes in two main forms: treatments that include only estrogen, and combined therapies with both estrogen and progesterone. The treatment has a complicated history.

HRT was popular in the 1990s but fell out of favor after results from the Women's Health Initiative study were published in 2002. That study identified various risks tied to both estrogen-only and combined HRT options, some of which have since been overturned by newer data.

That said, the Women's Health Initiative study found that estrogen-only HRT came with an increased risk of endometrial cancers, and later analyses have backed up this idea. That's why today, clinical guidelines recommend that women who have not gotten a hysterectomy take combined HRT, while estrogen-only options are reserved for those who have had their uterus removed. (The added progesterone counteracts estrogen's thickening effect on the uterine lining.)

For the subset of women who take estrogen-only HRT, observational data published in August showed that this form of the treatment was linked to a reduced risk of dementia. The study, published in the journal Neurology, found that women who took estrogen-only HRT were less likely to show Alzheimer's-related changes in the brain than women who didn't take any HRT.

Laboratory data suggest that estrogen may help prevent the formation and accumulation of abnormal proteins that are related to Alzheimer's. (Image credit: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

Estrogen-only HRT was also tied to better clinical outcomes: Treated women were less likely to be diagnosed with dementia, were less likely to show clinical and functional cognitive decline, and had better scores on memory tests, on average, compared with untreated women. These findings drew on two large, separate groups of older women, reporting data from 21,400 people in total, but they didn't include data on when each woman started HRT.

Whereas earlier studies of HRT and dementia risk relied on doctors' ratings of patients' symptoms, the Neurology study measured levels of Alzheimer's-related proteins in the brain after death. That's a more "definitive" marker of disease, said Bruno, a co-author of the study. However, the research was observational, so it can't say whether estrogen-only HRT directly causes the better brain outcomes the team observed, she stressed.

Although the Neurology study's findings are promising, they don't necessarily match the results of other studies of estrogen-only HRT and dementia. For example, a slightly larger observational study, published in 2023, found that estrogen-only HRT was associated with an increased dementia rate.

In that research, most of the women took a type of estrogen called estradiol, while Bruno's study included a greater variety of estrogens. That may have been the difference in the two studies' results, but teasing that out would require further study. Meanwhile, the conflicting findings muddy the waters of what estrogen-only HRT can do for brain health.

Does timing matter?

One big finding from the Women's Health Initiative study was that starting HRT — either estrogen-only or combined — after age 65 was associated with worse cognitive function and increased dementia risk, said Yuko Hara, director of aging and Alzheimer's prevention at the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation.

The same may not be true for people who start HRT earlier. For context, menopause starts around age 51 to 52, on average, and it's preceded by perimenopause, a transitional period when hormone levels begin to drop, typically around the mid-40s.

An observational study published in August in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia found that starting HRT between ages 46 and 56 was linked to a reduced risk of dementia. That study did not differentiate between estrogen-only and combined treatment; it lumped all of the data together.

A close up of a person putting a patch on their arm.

Patches (pictured) are one form of systemic HRT. They deliver hormones through the skin and into the bloodstream. (Image credit: SVPhilon via Getty Images)

The protective link was especially strong in three groups: women with "surgical menopause," triggered by the removal of one or both ovaries; carriers of a certain variant of a gene called APOE that raises Alzheimer's risk; and women who had a relatively short time between their first period and menopause.

A 2024 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials also found that HRT had a cognitive benefit for women with surgical menopause; that finding was tied mostly to estrogen-only therapies.

However, outside of that specific group, the idea of early HRT protecting brain health is far from settled.

Who might benefit, if anyone?

Related stories

When it comes to using hormone replacement to protect brain health, the evidence isn't yet strong enough to recommend any kind of HRT as a way to protect the brain in all women, Hara said. Women who had one or both of their ovaries surgically removed are the exception to this rule.

"This is a distinct clinical population because the procedure can cause an abrupt, early loss of estrogen, rather than the gradual hormonal decline that occurs with natural menopause," Hara said.

For most women who have gone through natural menopause, "there is not enough evidence to recommend [HRT] specifically for preventing cognitive decline or dementia," she said.

HRT is not currently prescribed to prevent dementia — it is prescribed to ease menopause symptoms, such as hot flashes, night sweats and sleep disturbances. To settle the science on HRT and the brain, what's really needed is a well-designed clinical trial that follows women from perimenopause to postmenopause, Bruno said. That would reveal the effects of HRT on brain health and dementia risk more reliably than the studies done so far.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'Textbooks will need to be updated': Jupiter is smaller and flatter than we thought, Juno spacecraft reveals ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/planets/textbooks-will-need-to-be-updated-jupiter-is-smaller-and-flatter-than-we-thought-juno-spacecraft-reveals + <![CDATA[ Fall stargazing 2026: The best skywatching sights in autumn (and how to see them) ]]> + With fall now upon us, many of us will be dusting off our binoculars and telescopes ready for the longer nights this season brings. Earlier sunsets mean more stargazing hours, and we'll start to see the return of some favorite celestial sights and deep-sky objects that we haven’t seen since before spring.

Fall is also an excellent time for casual stargazers, with the earlier evenings and cooler temperatures offering a comfortable compromise before we head into those freezing winter nights when we can't feel our toes. Don't worry if you're just starting out and don't have any gear yet, as many of this season's celestial objects are visible with the naked eye — and some are actually best viewed that way.

This September, October and November are great times to view the distant planets at opposition, catch several meteor showers and photograph far-flung galaxies and nebulas with your smart telescope. Plus, November brings the first full supermoon of the year. So, grab your telescope, your headlamp and a cozy sweater, and let's see what lies ahead.

Lunar & Planetary events

Neptune at opposition

An artist's illustration of Neptune, with faint streaks of wispy white clouds.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Neptune reaches opposition on September 26 at 02:00 UTC, which is the best time to view it at its brightest, magnitude +7.8. Unfortunately, the full moon will somewhat ruin the party, and Neptune isn't particularly easy to spot at the best of times. That said, the opposition window lasts for several weeks, so waiting a couple of weeks to observe during the new moon week won't make any noticeable difference.

You'll need a good telescope to spot the big blue planet — at least a 6-inch aperture, although an 8-inch or bigger will give you the best chance. Make sure you have a good quality, high-powered eyepiece (something like a 6mm or 9mm) or a good Barlow lens to boost the magnification of your existing eyepieces.

But even with high magnification, Neptune will only appear as a small disc with a bluish hue — you won't see any cloud bands or surface features, because it’s just too far away. Still, it's worth trying to get a glimpse anyway.

Saturn at opposition

An image of Saturn

(Image credit: NASA / Hubble)

A week later, on October 4 at 12:00 UTC, Saturn reaches opposition, shining at magnitude +0.3. It will be easily visible to the naked eye, although to see Saturn's rings or any of its largest moons, you'll need a telescope.

The moon will be just below 50% illuminated and doesn't rise until past midnight, so you'll have a good portion of the late evening to observe Saturn while it's high in the sky before the moonlight affects visibility. Even though the rings are only partially tilted, you can still make out a lovely golden oval around the planet, and in larger telescopes you'll be able to spot the Cassini division. We recommend a telescope with at least 4 or 5 inches of aperture, and a good quality, high-powered eyepiece to observe the finer details.

Full supermoon

Photograph of a full moon.

(Image credit: Dawn Villwok-Joerg/Getty Images)

November 24 brings the first full supermoon of fall/winter, when the bright Beaver Moon will light up the skies, shining around 15% brighter than a normal full moon.

You can enjoy this moon without any gear whatsoever, but observing with binoculars or a telescope, or capturing its magnificence with a camera, makes the experience much more enjoyable.

Until then, you can catch the other full moons of the season on September 26 and October 26.

Uranus at opposition

an illustration of Uranus

(Image credit: ARTUR PLAWGO / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The third planetary opposition of the fall belongs to Uranus on November 25 at 23:00 UTC. But like Neptune in September, the almost full moon will dampen its visibility, so we'd recommend waiting until the new moon week.

Like the other outer planets, you'll need a larger telescope with an aperture of at least 6 or 8 inches to view Uranus, alongside a good quality, high-powered eyepiece for the best views. These larger scopes gather enough light to distinguish Uranus's turquoise color, although you'll need to go even bigger if you want to see its brightest moons.

Meteor showers

Draconids

A meteor falls to Earth with a green aurora in the background

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The first meteor shower of the season — and unlike most showers, which involve a lot of caffeine and an all-nighter, the Draconids are best seen in the late evening instead of the dead of night.

This meteor shower is active between October 6-10, peaking on the night of October 8-9. With the radiant point in Draco being highest at nightfall and the thin crescent moon not causing any interference, the best viewing hours are in the late evening before midnight.

These meteors are leftover debris from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, and you can expect to see around 6-10 meteors per hour under ideal conditions.

Orionids

A shooting star streaks behind a lighthouse on a starry night

(Image credit: Mountain Light Photography Inc via Getty Images)

The Orionid meteor shower happens every October, when Earth passes through the trail of debris from Halley's Comet. In 2026, it's active between October 2 and November 7, with the peak occurring on the night of October 21-22. This shower brings between 10 and 20 meteors per hour under dark skies, radiating from the Orion constellation.

The waxing gibbous moon during the peak will add a fair bit of light pollution, but the moon will set between 03:12 am and 04:15 am depending on where in the States you're watching from, so you'll have a few hours before dawn to catch the darkest skies. You just need your eyes and clear, dark skies to see them, and a good astrophotography camera equipped with a wide-angle lens is perfect for capturing photos.

Taurids

Northern Taurids meteor shower above a row of trees

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Taurids meteor shower comes in two parts. The first is the Southern Taurids, active between September 10 and November 20, peaking on the night of November 4-5 (during a thin waning crescent moon). The Northern Taurids come slightly later and are active between October 20 and December 10, peaking on November 12 (during an even smaller waxing crescent moon).

The hit rate is one of the lowest of all the meteor showers, with only around 5 meteors per hour. However, the Taurids are known for producing bright, slower-moving fireballs that linger in the sky — making them a particularly appealing astrophotography target.

Peak viewing time will be around midnight, when the Taurus constellation reaches its highest point in the sky.

Leonids

Leonid meteor shower above Lampang Thailand

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Radiating from the Leo constellation, the Leonids come from the dust and debris left behind by comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle, which orbits the Sun every 33 years. They produce between 10 and 15 meteors per hour, and the shower period runs from November 6 to November 30, with the peak falling on the night of November 17-18.

The first quarter moon will set around midnight, making way for the best of the shower between midnight and 4 am in totally dark skies.

Star clusters and constellations

Pleiades (and Hyades)

Image of Pleiades, an open star cluster (also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45). There are a number of bright stars that stand out amongst the rest, surround by a faint dust cloud.

(Image credit: Giulio Ercolani / Alamy)

A favorite among many stargazers, the Pleiades (M45), an open cluster known as the "seven sisters" in the constellation of Taurus, slowly returns to the night sky this fall. By October, it rises in the east a couple of hours after sunset and is visible from dusk to dawn from November. Although it's about 440 light-years from Earth, you can see it with the naked eye under dark conditions — even though it's usually just a faint, fuzzy patch — but binoculars or a telescope provide a much more impressive view.

As Greek mythology has it, the sisters — named Maia, Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Taygete, Electra and Merope — were the daughters of the Titan Atlas and Pleione. The story is that Zeus transformed them into a cluster of stars to escape the relentless pursuit of the giant hunter Orion, who fell in love with the sisters and chased them for seven years. It seems he couldn't take the hint.

Look below the Pleiades, and you'll find their five half-sisters, the Hyades — an open cluster which makes up the V-shaped face of Taurus, the Bull.

The Pleiades are a fantastic target to capture with a smart telescope. If you want to stack multiple sessions across fall and winter, start in late November when they're high in the sky. You want an altitude of 50 degrees or higher, and ideally 60 degrees or more. The cluster itself is easy to capture, but the less atmosphere you're looking through, the more you can pull out that delicate blue nebulosity, which is what takes an image of the Pleiades from good to spectacular.

Another enemy of that lovely blue glow is the moon, so make sure you're imaging under completely dark skies with no more than around 25% moonlight. If you get a clear, moonless night, aim for 2-3 hours minimum to capture the faint nebulosity, and go for 3-5 hours for a really impressive image.

Pegasus

Pegasus constellation

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The best time to see the Great Square of Pegasus is during the fall evenings between September and January, with October offering the clearest and highest views in the night sky.

This asterism is a large, prominent square shape made up of four bright stars in the eastern sky — Markab, Scheat, Algenib and Alpheratz — with the latter belonging to the neighboring constellation of Andromeda. The square is said to make up the body of the winged horse, and the four stars range from about 133 to 670 light-years away from Earth. Point a pair of binoculars at them, and they'll reveal many more stars that are not visible to the naked eye.

Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia constellation

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Cassiopeia is one of the Northern Hemisphere's circumpolar constellations, so although it's technically visible all year, it's best seen during the autumn and winter months. Throughout the fall, it climbs higher and higher in the sky, reaching its upper culmination in mid-November, when it is best viewed between 9 pm and midnight.

Depending on its rotation in the sky, Cassiopeia appears as a "W" or "M" shape made up of five bright stars ranging from 19 to 425 light-years away and visible with the naked eye.

Cassiopeia was a vain, arrogant queen in Greek mythology, and after boasting that she and her daughter, Andromeda, were more beautiful than the Nereids, the gods placed her in the sky tied to her throne, where she spends half of the year upside down as punishment for her vanity.

The Owl Cluster

owl cluster in the night sky

(Image credit: Stocktrek Images via Getty Images)

In addition to the constellation itself, there are some fun hidden objects within Cassiopeia that require binoculars or a telescope. The Owl Cluster (NGC 457) is a bright, open star cluster near the bottom-left star of the W shape, containing around 150 stars (although only 60 are identified as true cluster members), and is roughly 8,000 light-years from Earth. The blue and yellow "eyes" consist of the stars Phi Cassiopeiae (magnitude +5.0) and HD 7902 (magnitude +7.0).

You'll need a pair of astronomy binoculars to see it — go for 15x70 for a decent view, or 20x80 for an even better observation.

Caroline's Rose

NGC 7789 in a starry sky

(Image credit: Alan Dyer/StockTrek Via Getty Images)

Caroline's Rose (NGC 7789) is another open cluster in Cassiopeia, situated close to the last of the five bright stars in the "W" shape. Astronomer Caroline Herschel discovered the cluster in 1783 and it contains over 1,000 confirmed member stars, with estimates suggesting up to 3,000 potential stars.

It was named "Caroline's Rose" or the "White Rose" because its winding loops of stars and dark empty lanes resemble the petals of a cosmic rose, and it is estimated to be around 1.4 to 1.7 billion years old.

You can see it with a pair of binoculars under reasonably dark skies, but the best views will come from a telescope.

Deep-sky nebulas & galaxies

Andromeda galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda (M31), is about 2.5 million light-years from Earth and may one day collide with the Milky Way ("one day" being a 50/50 chance around 10 billion years from now, according to new research). But until then, we can easily make do with observing from afar with binoculars and telescopes.

October and November are prime evening viewing time, with the galaxy reaching its highest point between 7 pm and 11 pm. Under clear, dark skies, it's the most distant object visible to the naked eye, appearing as a very faint smudge — provided you know where to look. Binoculars provide a marginally better view of a somewhat larger, slightly brighter faint smudge — we've managed to see it with a pair of 8x25s under dark skies — but for the best views, you want a telescope.

It's a great first target for beginners using a smart telescope, with the prominent dust lanes revealing themselves after 30-60 minutes. If you want more detailed images of the faint outer arms, leave it for 3-4 hours. Moonlight can wash out the faint galactic arms and dust lanes, so if possible, choose a dark night with minimal light pollution.

In Greek mythology, Andromeda was the daughter of the aforementioned Cassiopeia. After angering the sea god Poseidon, Cassiopeia (who was not exactly Mother of the Year) chained Andromeda to a rock as a human sacrifice to the sea monster, Cetus, that Poseidon had sent to ravage their kingdom's coast. Andromeda was saved by Perseus, who she then married, and after her death, Athena placed her in the stars as a constellation.

Helix Nebula

An image of a rainbow-colored round nebula

(Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand)

The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a large planetary nebula around 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Often called the "Eye of God", it has a striking eye-like appearance, and it features thousands of comet-like radial filaments and complex gas rings.

It stays relatively low in the southern sky, with September being the best time to view or photograph before it gradually sinks over the coming months. Moonlight will completely wash out its faint outer gaseous ring, so it's best to shoot during a new moon (or when the moon hasn't yet risen) to get the best image possible.

The best hours to capture it are between about 10:30 am and 2 am, when it's either rising or at its highest. This should get you a pretty decent standard image, but if you want more detail, try to capture it over several nights to pull in the faint outer nebulosity and stack the images.

Triangulum Galaxy

Triangulum Galaxy

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is the third-largest in our local group of galaxies, behind the Milky Way and Andromeda. This stunning spiral galaxy — not to be confused with the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), which is best seen in the spring — sits in the small Triangulum constellation about 2.7 million light-years from Earth and is a great astrophotography target.

Its peak viewing time is October to December, when its highest and clearest position is after dark in the late evening. Because it's so faint, you need a moonless night away from light pollution. The sweet spot for smart telescopes is around 90 minutes, but if you can shoot for longer or want to split your shoot across multiple nights, 2.5 to 4+ hours can bring out more detail in the core and spiral arm.

Heart and Soul Nebula

heart and soul nebula

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Heart and Soul Nebula is a nebula complex consisting of two massive emission nebulas located about 6,000 to 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. They are primarily made of glowing ionized hydrogen gas, darker cosmic dust lanes and trace amounts of ionized oxygen and sulfur.

Like most other nebulas, they aren't visible to the naked eye, so you'll need a telescope or a long-exposure astrophotography setup to see them. The Heart Nebula (IC 1805) is, unsurprisingly, named after its heart-like shape, while its neighbor, the Soul Nebula (IC 1848), has a more irregular shape with large cavities made by stellar winds.

If you're imaging the Heart and Soul with a camera or smart telescope, a total integration time of 6 to 12 hours will provide you with the cleanest details and most contrast in the faint gas structures. That said, 2 to 4 hours will give you a good basic stacked image.

As Cassiopeia is at its highest in the fall, this is the best time to see and photograph it with the least amount of atmospheric interference.

Ghost of Cassiopeia

ghost nebula

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Ghost of Cassiopeia, often referred to as the Ghost Nebula (IC 63), is a mixed reflection and emission nebula around 550 light-years away in Cassiopeia. Its eerie red glow is caused by its proximity to the nearby blue giant star, Gamma Cassiopeiae, which sits right in the middle of the constellation's distinctive 'W' shape. The star’s powerful ultraviolet radiation causes the hydrogen to emit a soft red glow, while the surrounding dust reflects the star's light in fainter blue hues.

Like the other celestial sights in Cassiopeia, autumn and winter evenings are the best times to see and photograph it due to its high altitude in the sky. As the nebula is so faint and elusive to capture, you can only see it with a smart telescope or a long-exposure astrophotography setup.

When it comes to integration time, the longer the better. Aim for 3-5 hours minimum, ideally 6+ hours if the skies allow, and avoid shooting during moonlight if you can.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/products/optics/fall-stargazing-2026 - + - VbTRgeKggVW68Nqj8qC8GT - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:23:35 +0000 - - - - - - - + xH7JgRRA2HUXZKHVWMrdBY + + Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:24:52 +0000 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:08:20 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + + + + + +

With fall now upon us, many of us will be dusting off our binoculars and telescopes ready for the longer nights this season brings. Earlier sunsets mean more stargazing hours, and we'll start to see the return of some favorite celestial sights and deep-sky objects that we haven’t seen since before spring.

Fall is also an excellent time for casual stargazers, with the earlier evenings and cooler temperatures offering a comfortable compromise before we head into those freezing winter nights when we can't feel our toes. Don't worry if you're just starting out and don't have any gear yet, as many of this season's celestial objects are visible with the naked eye — and some are actually best viewed that way.

This September, October and November are great times to view the distant planets at opposition, catch several meteor showers and photograph far-flung galaxies and nebulas with your smart telescope. Plus, November brings the first full supermoon of the year. So, grab your telescope, your headlamp and a cozy sweater, and let's see what lies ahead.

Lunar & Planetary events

Neptune at opposition

An artist's illustration of Neptune, with faint streaks of wispy white clouds.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Neptune reaches opposition on September 26 at 02:00 UTC, which is the best time to view it at its brightest, magnitude +7.8. Unfortunately, the full moon will somewhat ruin the party, and Neptune isn't particularly easy to spot at the best of times. That said, the opposition window lasts for several weeks, so waiting a couple of weeks to observe during the new moon week won't make any noticeable difference.

You'll need a good telescope to spot the big blue planet — at least a 6-inch aperture, although an 8-inch or bigger will give you the best chance. Make sure you have a good quality, high-powered eyepiece (something like a 6mm or 9mm) or a good Barlow lens to boost the magnification of your existing eyepieces.

But even with high magnification, Neptune will only appear as a small disc with a bluish hue — you won't see any cloud bands or surface features, because it’s just too far away. Still, it's worth trying to get a glimpse anyway.

Saturn at opposition

An image of Saturn

(Image credit: NASA / Hubble)

A week later, on October 4 at 12:00 UTC, Saturn reaches opposition, shining at magnitude +0.3. It will be easily visible to the naked eye, although to see Saturn's rings or any of its largest moons, you'll need a telescope.

The moon will be just below 50% illuminated and doesn't rise until past midnight, so you'll have a good portion of the late evening to observe Saturn while it's high in the sky before the moonlight affects visibility. Even though the rings are only partially tilted, you can still make out a lovely golden oval around the planet, and in larger telescopes you'll be able to spot the Cassini division. We recommend a telescope with at least 4 or 5 inches of aperture, and a good quality, high-powered eyepiece to observe the finer details.

Full supermoon

Photograph of a full moon.

(Image credit: Dawn Villwok-Joerg/Getty Images)

November 24 brings the first full supermoon of fall/winter, when the bright Beaver Moon will light up the skies, shining around 15% brighter than a normal full moon.

You can enjoy this moon without any gear whatsoever, but observing with binoculars or a telescope, or capturing its magnificence with a camera, makes the experience much more enjoyable.

Until then, you can catch the other full moons of the season on September 26 and October 26.

Uranus at opposition

an illustration of Uranus

(Image credit: ARTUR PLAWGO / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The third planetary opposition of the fall belongs to Uranus on November 25 at 23:00 UTC. But like Neptune in September, the almost full moon will dampen its visibility, so we'd recommend waiting until the new moon week.

Like the other outer planets, you'll need a larger telescope with an aperture of at least 6 or 8 inches to view Uranus, alongside a good quality, high-powered eyepiece for the best views. These larger scopes gather enough light to distinguish Uranus's turquoise color, although you'll need to go even bigger if you want to see its brightest moons.

Meteor showers

Draconids

A meteor falls to Earth with a green aurora in the background

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The first meteor shower of the season — and unlike most showers, which involve a lot of caffeine and an all-nighter, the Draconids are best seen in the late evening instead of the dead of night.

This meteor shower is active between October 6-10, peaking on the night of October 8-9. With the radiant point in Draco being highest at nightfall and the thin crescent moon not causing any interference, the best viewing hours are in the late evening before midnight.

These meteors are leftover debris from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, and you can expect to see around 6-10 meteors per hour under ideal conditions.

Orionids

A shooting star streaks behind a lighthouse on a starry night

(Image credit: Mountain Light Photography Inc via Getty Images)

The Orionid meteor shower happens every October, when Earth passes through the trail of debris from Halley's Comet. In 2026, it's active between October 2 and November 7, with the peak occurring on the night of October 21-22. This shower brings between 10 and 20 meteors per hour under dark skies, radiating from the Orion constellation.

The waxing gibbous moon during the peak will add a fair bit of light pollution, but the moon will set between 03:12 am and 04:15 am depending on where in the States you're watching from, so you'll have a few hours before dawn to catch the darkest skies. You just need your eyes and clear, dark skies to see them, and a good astrophotography camera equipped with a wide-angle lens is perfect for capturing photos.

Taurids

Northern Taurids meteor shower above a row of trees

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Taurids meteor shower comes in two parts. The first is the Southern Taurids, active between September 10 and November 20, peaking on the night of November 4-5 (during a thin waning crescent moon). The Northern Taurids come slightly later and are active between October 20 and December 10, peaking on November 12 (during an even smaller waxing crescent moon).

The hit rate is one of the lowest of all the meteor showers, with only around 5 meteors per hour. However, the Taurids are known for producing bright, slower-moving fireballs that linger in the sky — making them a particularly appealing astrophotography target.

Peak viewing time will be around midnight, when the Taurus constellation reaches its highest point in the sky.

Leonids

Leonid meteor shower above Lampang Thailand

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Radiating from the Leo constellation, the Leonids come from the dust and debris left behind by comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle, which orbits the Sun every 33 years. They produce between 10 and 15 meteors per hour, and the shower period runs from November 6 to November 30, with the peak falling on the night of November 17-18.

The first quarter moon will set around midnight, making way for the best of the shower between midnight and 4 am in totally dark skies.

Star clusters and constellations

Pleiades (and Hyades)

Image of Pleiades, an open star cluster (also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45). There are a number of bright stars that stand out amongst the rest, surround by a faint dust cloud.

(Image credit: Giulio Ercolani / Alamy)

A favorite among many stargazers, the Pleiades (M45), an open cluster known as the "seven sisters" in the constellation of Taurus, slowly returns to the night sky this fall. By October, it rises in the east a couple of hours after sunset and is visible from dusk to dawn from November. Although it's about 440 light-years from Earth, you can see it with the naked eye under dark conditions — even though it's usually just a faint, fuzzy patch — but binoculars or a telescope provide a much more impressive view.

As Greek mythology has it, the sisters — named Maia, Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Taygete, Electra and Merope — were the daughters of the Titan Atlas and Pleione. The story is that Zeus transformed them into a cluster of stars to escape the relentless pursuit of the giant hunter Orion, who fell in love with the sisters and chased them for seven years. It seems he couldn't take the hint.

Look below the Pleiades, and you'll find their five half-sisters, the Hyades — an open cluster which makes up the V-shaped face of Taurus, the Bull.

The Pleiades are a fantastic target to capture with a smart telescope. If you want to stack multiple sessions across fall and winter, start in late November when they're high in the sky. You want an altitude of 50 degrees or higher, and ideally 60 degrees or more. The cluster itself is easy to capture, but the less atmosphere you're looking through, the more you can pull out that delicate blue nebulosity, which is what takes an image of the Pleiades from good to spectacular.

Another enemy of that lovely blue glow is the moon, so make sure you're imaging under completely dark skies with no more than around 25% moonlight. If you get a clear, moonless night, aim for 2-3 hours minimum to capture the faint nebulosity, and go for 3-5 hours for a really impressive image.

Pegasus

Pegasus constellation

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The best time to see the Great Square of Pegasus is during the fall evenings between September and January, with October offering the clearest and highest views in the night sky.

This asterism is a large, prominent square shape made up of four bright stars in the eastern sky — Markab, Scheat, Algenib and Alpheratz — with the latter belonging to the neighboring constellation of Andromeda. The square is said to make up the body of the winged horse, and the four stars range from about 133 to 670 light-years away from Earth. Point a pair of binoculars at them, and they'll reveal many more stars that are not visible to the naked eye.

Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia constellation

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Cassiopeia is one of the Northern Hemisphere's circumpolar constellations, so although it's technically visible all year, it's best seen during the autumn and winter months. Throughout the fall, it climbs higher and higher in the sky, reaching its upper culmination in mid-November, when it is best viewed between 9 pm and midnight.

Depending on its rotation in the sky, Cassiopeia appears as a "W" or "M" shape made up of five bright stars ranging from 19 to 425 light-years away and visible with the naked eye.

Cassiopeia was a vain, arrogant queen in Greek mythology, and after boasting that she and her daughter, Andromeda, were more beautiful than the Nereids, the gods placed her in the sky tied to her throne, where she spends half of the year upside down as punishment for her vanity.

The Owl Cluster

owl cluster in the night sky

(Image credit: Stocktrek Images via Getty Images)

In addition to the constellation itself, there are some fun hidden objects within Cassiopeia that require binoculars or a telescope. The Owl Cluster (NGC 457) is a bright, open star cluster near the bottom-left star of the W shape, containing around 150 stars (although only 60 are identified as true cluster members), and is roughly 8,000 light-years from Earth. The blue and yellow "eyes" consist of the stars Phi Cassiopeiae (magnitude +5.0) and HD 7902 (magnitude +7.0).

You'll need a pair of astronomy binoculars to see it — go for 15x70 for a decent view, or 20x80 for an even better observation.

Caroline's Rose

NGC 7789 in a starry sky

(Image credit: Alan Dyer/StockTrek Via Getty Images)

Caroline's Rose (NGC 7789) is another open cluster in Cassiopeia, situated close to the last of the five bright stars in the "W" shape. Astronomer Caroline Herschel discovered the cluster in 1783 and it contains over 1,000 confirmed member stars, with estimates suggesting up to 3,000 potential stars.

It was named "Caroline's Rose" or the "White Rose" because its winding loops of stars and dark empty lanes resemble the petals of a cosmic rose, and it is estimated to be around 1.4 to 1.7 billion years old.

You can see it with a pair of binoculars under reasonably dark skies, but the best views will come from a telescope.

Deep-sky nebulas & galaxies

Andromeda galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda (M31), is about 2.5 million light-years from Earth and may one day collide with the Milky Way ("one day" being a 50/50 chance around 10 billion years from now, according to new research). But until then, we can easily make do with observing from afar with binoculars and telescopes.

October and November are prime evening viewing time, with the galaxy reaching its highest point between 7 pm and 11 pm. Under clear, dark skies, it's the most distant object visible to the naked eye, appearing as a very faint smudge — provided you know where to look. Binoculars provide a marginally better view of a somewhat larger, slightly brighter faint smudge — we've managed to see it with a pair of 8x25s under dark skies — but for the best views, you want a telescope.

It's a great first target for beginners using a smart telescope, with the prominent dust lanes revealing themselves after 30-60 minutes. If you want more detailed images of the faint outer arms, leave it for 3-4 hours. Moonlight can wash out the faint galactic arms and dust lanes, so if possible, choose a dark night with minimal light pollution.

In Greek mythology, Andromeda was the daughter of the aforementioned Cassiopeia. After angering the sea god Poseidon, Cassiopeia (who was not exactly Mother of the Year) chained Andromeda to a rock as a human sacrifice to the sea monster, Cetus, that Poseidon had sent to ravage their kingdom's coast. Andromeda was saved by Perseus, who she then married, and after her death, Athena placed her in the stars as a constellation.

Helix Nebula

An image of a rainbow-colored round nebula

(Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand)

The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a large planetary nebula around 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Often called the "Eye of God", it has a striking eye-like appearance, and it features thousands of comet-like radial filaments and complex gas rings.

It stays relatively low in the southern sky, with September being the best time to view or photograph before it gradually sinks over the coming months. Moonlight will completely wash out its faint outer gaseous ring, so it's best to shoot during a new moon (or when the moon hasn't yet risen) to get the best image possible.

The best hours to capture it are between about 10:30 am and 2 am, when it's either rising or at its highest. This should get you a pretty decent standard image, but if you want more detail, try to capture it over several nights to pull in the faint outer nebulosity and stack the images.

Triangulum Galaxy

Triangulum Galaxy

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is the third-largest in our local group of galaxies, behind the Milky Way and Andromeda. This stunning spiral galaxy — not to be confused with the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), which is best seen in the spring — sits in the small Triangulum constellation about 2.7 million light-years from Earth and is a great astrophotography target.

Its peak viewing time is October to December, when its highest and clearest position is after dark in the late evening. Because it's so faint, you need a moonless night away from light pollution. The sweet spot for smart telescopes is around 90 minutes, but if you can shoot for longer or want to split your shoot across multiple nights, 2.5 to 4+ hours can bring out more detail in the core and spiral arm.

Heart and Soul Nebula

heart and soul nebula

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Heart and Soul Nebula is a nebula complex consisting of two massive emission nebulas located about 6,000 to 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. They are primarily made of glowing ionized hydrogen gas, darker cosmic dust lanes and trace amounts of ionized oxygen and sulfur.

Like most other nebulas, they aren't visible to the naked eye, so you'll need a telescope or a long-exposure astrophotography setup to see them. The Heart Nebula (IC 1805) is, unsurprisingly, named after its heart-like shape, while its neighbor, the Soul Nebula (IC 1848), has a more irregular shape with large cavities made by stellar winds.

If you're imaging the Heart and Soul with a camera or smart telescope, a total integration time of 6 to 12 hours will provide you with the cleanest details and most contrast in the faint gas structures. That said, 2 to 4 hours will give you a good basic stacked image.

As Cassiopeia is at its highest in the fall, this is the best time to see and photograph it with the least amount of atmospheric interference.

Ghost of Cassiopeia

ghost nebula

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Ghost of Cassiopeia, often referred to as the Ghost Nebula (IC 63), is a mixed reflection and emission nebula around 550 light-years away in Cassiopeia. Its eerie red glow is caused by its proximity to the nearby blue giant star, Gamma Cassiopeiae, which sits right in the middle of the constellation's distinctive 'W' shape. The star’s powerful ultraviolet radiation causes the hydrogen to emit a soft red glow, while the surrounding dust reflects the star's light in fainter blue hues.

Like the other celestial sights in Cassiopeia, autumn and winter evenings are the best times to see and photograph it due to its high altitude in the sky. As the nebula is so faint and elusive to capture, you can only see it with a smart telescope or a long-exposure astrophotography setup.

When it comes to integration time, the longer the better. Aim for 3-5 hours minimum, ideally 6+ hours if the skies allow, and avoid shooting during moonlight if you can.

+ + ]]> + + + + <![CDATA[ Haunting Hubble telescope image captures cosmic cycle of destruction and creation —‬ Space photo of the week ]]> +
Quick facts

What it is: The nebula LHA 120-N44

Where it is: 160,000 light-years away, in the constellation Dorado

When it was shared: Sept. 3, 2026

It looks like a gigantic hole punched through a cloud, but this spectacular new image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures something more complicated: a cosmic cycle of destruction and creation, with one generation of stars tearing apart its birthplace while simultaneously helping a new generation form.

LHA 120-N44 (N44, for short) is a nebula that lies about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. From Earth, it appears in the constellation Dorado. This enormous, empty-looking region measures roughly 210 by 140 light-years. To put that into context, consider that Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours, is a mere 4.4 light-years distant. Thanks to that giant, hole-like appearance, this nebula is known as a superbubble, a cavity carved out by a cluster of hot, massive stars near its center.

Those stars are bent on destruction. Just like our star's solar wind, which creates auroras on Earth and defines the extent of the solar system, these stars' powerful winds blast material into space. Meanwhile, the most massive of these stars eventually explode as supernovas, pushing even more gas aside. The collective radiation from both these old and young stars carves the nebula's giant cavity.

So what happened to that expelled gas? Most of it has been pushed outward and compressed into a dense shell of gas and dust surrounding the superbubble. Within that shell, new stars are forming ‪—‬ so the same massive stars that destroy the gas cloud that created them also may help to produce their replacements.

This is known as "stellar feedback" — when massive stars heat, ionize and disperse the gas and dust around them, making star formation impossible in their vicinity. Meanwhile, their winds can squeeze neighboring gas clouds until they become dense enough to collapse under their own gravity and make new stars.

This Hubble image of N44 contains almost half a million stars, including those in the nebula and some lying along the same line of sight. About 30,000 of them are young stars yet to fuse hydrogen in their cores — the reaction that powers stars like the sun. With so many young protostars not yet hot and dense enough to become full-fledged main-sequence stars, N44 gives astronomers a rare opportunity to attempt an answer to what may seem like a very simple question: how long does it take to make a star?

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/haunting-hubble-telescope-image-captures-cosmic-cycle-of-destruction-and-creation-space-photo-of-the-week + + + + LvNK6Z9gpVMrmaxeG5qASP + + Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:08:20 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +
Quick facts

What it is: The nebula LHA 120-N44

Where it is: 160,000 light-years away, in the constellation Dorado

When it was shared: Sept. 3, 2026

It looks like a gigantic hole punched through a cloud, but this spectacular new image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures something more complicated: a cosmic cycle of destruction and creation, with one generation of stars tearing apart its birthplace while simultaneously helping a new generation form.

LHA 120-N44 (N44, for short) is a nebula that lies about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. From Earth, it appears in the constellation Dorado. This enormous, empty-looking region measures roughly 210 by 140 light-years. To put that into context, consider that Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours, is a mere 4.4 light-years distant. Thanks to that giant, hole-like appearance, this nebula is known as a superbubble, a cavity carved out by a cluster of hot, massive stars near its center.

Those stars are bent on destruction. Just like our star's solar wind, which creates auroras on Earth and defines the extent of the solar system, these stars' powerful winds blast material into space. Meanwhile, the most massive of these stars eventually explode as supernovas, pushing even more gas aside. The collective radiation from both these old and young stars carves the nebula's giant cavity.

So what happened to that expelled gas? Most of it has been pushed outward and compressed into a dense shell of gas and dust surrounding the superbubble. Within that shell, new stars are forming ‪—‬ so the same massive stars that destroy the gas cloud that created them also may help to produce their replacements.

This is known as "stellar feedback" — when massive stars heat, ionize and disperse the gas and dust around them, making star formation impossible in their vicinity. Meanwhile, their winds can squeeze neighboring gas clouds until they become dense enough to collapse under their own gravity and make new stars.

This Hubble image of N44 contains almost half a million stars, including those in the nebula and some lying along the same line of sight. About 30,000 of them are young stars yet to fuse hydrogen in their cores — the reaction that powers stars like the sun. With so many young protostars not yet hot and dense enough to become full-fledged main-sequence stars, N44 gives astronomers a rare opportunity to attempt an answer to what may seem like a very simple question: how long does it take to make a star?

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Grim photo captures polar bear mom and cubs resting in mud in summer heat ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/polar-bears/grim-photo-captures-polar-bear-mom-and-cubs-resting-in-mud-in-summer-heat + <![CDATA[ Why do cats lick each other? ]]> + In a multicat household, it's common to see one cat licking another. When some people see this behavior, known as allogrooming ("allo" means "another individual"), they assume it's a sign of friendship.

But is that really the case? Are there hidden, more complex reasons for why cats lick each other?

While research into allogrooming is ongoing, scientists have suggested different explanations for why cats lick each other, including some social reasons and some more practical ones.

Social bonding or social tension?

The historical view, based on observations of free-roaming-cat colonies, was that allogrooming is a sign of affection and helps cats create and maintain bonds with other cats in their social group, perhaps by creating a shared group smell.

But a 1998 study of 25 cats living together in an indoor-outdoor enclosure poked holes in this theory. The study found that aggressive behavior showed up in about 35% of allogrooming sessions, which suggested that allogrooming might not be about friendship. Instead, the authors proposed, it may help to defuse a tense situation in a confined space, where an actual fight would be too risky.

Sign up for our newsletter

The words 'Life Little Mysteries' over a blue background

Sign up for our weekly Life's Little Mysteries newsletter to get the latest mysteries before they appear online.

To investigate, Morgane Van Belle, a cat behavior scientist at Ghent University in Belgium, and her colleagues analyzed videos of allogrooming from 53 two-cat homes. They concluded that allogrooming may have different social functions, depending on the situation.

The team noticed that the cats sometimes licked each other while huddling together and copying one another's body postures. In these moments, allogrooming probably helps strengthen social bonds, the researchers proposed. Most licking was directed toward the ears; this may help cats relax because the skin there is rich in sensory nerve endings, Van Belle said. Allogrooming produces a relaxing effect in other animals too. For example, it lowers the heart rate in horses and triggers the release of feel-good hormones in monkeys.

Cats often lick the head and neck, especially the ears, of other cats. Ear-licking may help cats relax because the skin there is rich in sensory nerve endings. (Image credit: Madzia71 via Getty Images)

They also noted that allogrooming sometimes led to friendly wrestling, in which the cats grabbed each other with their front legs and tumbled around. This suggests that allogrooming may serve as a signal to start play.

In other situations, however, the researchers noticed that allogrooming was followed by behaviors linked to conflict, such as turning the ears backward, pawing, and biting. In these cases, one cat would stand or lean over the other, and both cats showed subtle signs of stress like lip licking, head shaking or self-scratching.

Based on these observations, Van Belle's team think that allogrooming may be an "appeasement signal" in fraught moments that could lead to conflict or injury, for example, when one cat wants to take over a sleeping spot already occupied by another. They think it possible that the licking helps to calm things down and keeps a spat from turning into a real fight. Similar behavior has been seen in meerkats, where subordinate individuals groom dominant ones to placate them.

Yet because this licking often targets the neck — the same area cats bite during fights — it also may signal a subtle aggressive threat, the researchers suggested.

It's possible that feral cats may have a different allogrooming pattern than pet cats do. (Image credit: Kriswanto Ginting via Getty Images)

Hygiene and grooming

Van Belle and her colleagues think that, beyond sending social signals, allogrooming may help with hygiene. After all, it's often aimed at the head and neck ‪—‬ the areas that are "least accessible for the cat itself during grooming," Van Belle said. Allogrooming is thought to have a hygienic function in other species too. For example, ants achieve colony-level hygiene by grooming heavily infected individuals more, and primates concentrate their grooming on body parts the recipient can't easily reach. When it comes to cats, however, more research is needed. Van Belle's study did not measure parasites, infections or skin cleanliness to see whether such grooming actually reduces dirt or bugs.

Dr. Terry Curtis, a veterinary behaviorist who has studied how often allogrooming happens, also thinks cats might groom each other for hygiene reasons. She wonders whether feral cats, who likely carry more fleas than house cats, might have a different allogrooming pattern.

Related mysteries

The explanations proposed by Van Belle and colleagues are reasonable but not definitive, Curtis said. Because so many factors can shape a cat's behavior, she's skeptical that researchers will ever be able to say with real confidence exactly why one cat grooms another.

After working as a veterinary behaviorist for 25 years, Curtis has concluded it is often impossible to understand what's going on in a cat's mind.

"Congratulations, you got a cat," she said. "Let the mystery begin.”

How much of a cat fan are you? Find out by taking our cat quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/animals/cats/why-do-cats-lick-each-other - + - rXCFh7x9ynYDDiRWgr3QQN - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:01:00 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:34:21 +0000 - + N9JPKwXToXjRMXmfobwmbi + + Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 - - - - - + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

In a multicat household, it's common to see one cat licking another. When some people see this behavior, known as allogrooming ("allo" means "another individual"), they assume it's a sign of friendship.

But is that really the case? Are there hidden, more complex reasons for why cats lick each other?

While research into allogrooming is ongoing, scientists have suggested different explanations for why cats lick each other, including some social reasons and some more practical ones.

Social bonding or social tension?

The historical view, based on observations of free-roaming-cat colonies, was that allogrooming is a sign of affection and helps cats create and maintain bonds with other cats in their social group, perhaps by creating a shared group smell.

But a 1998 study of 25 cats living together in an indoor-outdoor enclosure poked holes in this theory. The study found that aggressive behavior showed up in about 35% of allogrooming sessions, which suggested that allogrooming might not be about friendship. Instead, the authors proposed, it may help to defuse a tense situation in a confined space, where an actual fight would be too risky.

Sign up for our newsletter

The words 'Life Little Mysteries' over a blue background

Sign up for our weekly Life's Little Mysteries newsletter to get the latest mysteries before they appear online.

To investigate, Morgane Van Belle, a cat behavior scientist at Ghent University in Belgium, and her colleagues analyzed videos of allogrooming from 53 two-cat homes. They concluded that allogrooming may have different social functions, depending on the situation.

The team noticed that the cats sometimes licked each other while huddling together and copying one another's body postures. In these moments, allogrooming probably helps strengthen social bonds, the researchers proposed. Most licking was directed toward the ears; this may help cats relax because the skin there is rich in sensory nerve endings, Van Belle said. Allogrooming produces a relaxing effect in other animals too. For example, it lowers the heart rate in horses and triggers the release of feel-good hormones in monkeys.

Cats often lick the head and neck, especially the ears, of other cats. Ear-licking may help cats relax because the skin there is rich in sensory nerve endings. (Image credit: Madzia71 via Getty Images)

They also noted that allogrooming sometimes led to friendly wrestling, in which the cats grabbed each other with their front legs and tumbled around. This suggests that allogrooming may serve as a signal to start play.

In other situations, however, the researchers noticed that allogrooming was followed by behaviors linked to conflict, such as turning the ears backward, pawing, and biting. In these cases, one cat would stand or lean over the other, and both cats showed subtle signs of stress like lip licking, head shaking or self-scratching.

Based on these observations, Van Belle's team think that allogrooming may be an "appeasement signal" in fraught moments that could lead to conflict or injury, for example, when one cat wants to take over a sleeping spot already occupied by another. They think it possible that the licking helps to calm things down and keeps a spat from turning into a real fight. Similar behavior has been seen in meerkats, where subordinate individuals groom dominant ones to placate them.

Yet because this licking often targets the neck — the same area cats bite during fights — it also may signal a subtle aggressive threat, the researchers suggested.

It's possible that feral cats may have a different allogrooming pattern than pet cats do. (Image credit: Kriswanto Ginting via Getty Images)

Hygiene and grooming

Van Belle and her colleagues think that, beyond sending social signals, allogrooming may help with hygiene. After all, it's often aimed at the head and neck ‪—‬ the areas that are "least accessible for the cat itself during grooming," Van Belle said. Allogrooming is thought to have a hygienic function in other species too. For example, ants achieve colony-level hygiene by grooming heavily infected individuals more, and primates concentrate their grooming on body parts the recipient can't easily reach. When it comes to cats, however, more research is needed. Van Belle's study did not measure parasites, infections or skin cleanliness to see whether such grooming actually reduces dirt or bugs.

Dr. Terry Curtis, a veterinary behaviorist who has studied how often allogrooming happens, also thinks cats might groom each other for hygiene reasons. She wonders whether feral cats, who likely carry more fleas than house cats, might have a different allogrooming pattern.

Related mysteries

The explanations proposed by Van Belle and colleagues are reasonable but not definitive, Curtis said. Because so many factors can shape a cat's behavior, she's skeptical that researchers will ever be able to say with real confidence exactly why one cat grooms another.

After working as a veterinary behaviorist for 25 years, Curtis has concluded it is often impossible to understand what's going on in a cat's mind.

"Congratulations, you got a cat," she said. "Let the mystery begin.”

How much of a cat fan are you? Find out by taking our cat quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ A deer carrying the rotting head of its vanquished foe and a playful lynx shortlisted for Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People's Choice Award ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/a-deer-carrying-the-rotting-head-of-its-vanquished-foe-and-a-playful-lynx-shortlisted-for-wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-nuveen-peoples-choice-award + <![CDATA[ Scientists got diamond's melting point wrong by more than 1,000 degrees, crushing new laser experiment reveals ]]> + Scientists melted diamonds with a powerful laser to take some of the most precise measurements of the mineral's elusive melting point — and found that previous experiments were off by more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius).

It's odd to think of diamond, the hardest natural material on Earth, melting — but melt it does when blasted with extremely powerful lasers under the right conditions. Understanding how diamond responds to shock waves from lasers is an important part of developing nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars. Nuclear fusion is also a potential energy source for the future, so researchers have put a lot of effort into developing models that describe and predict how diamond behaves.

However, diamond is weird. Although the experimental data and theoretical models match up pretty well most of the time, there have been some strange discrepancies scientists haven't been able to explain. The biggest one is the 2,240 F (1,244 C) ‪—‬ roughly 20% ‪—‬ difference between previous experimental data and model-predicted melting temperatures of diamond. There's also been some debate about whether diamond reorganizes its atoms into a different kind of solid carbon before turning into a liquid at the end of the melting process.

Researchers have struggled to explain these discrepancies because the conditions diamond melts at are so extreme that it's extraordinarily difficult to measure it in labs on Earth. However, new experiments may finally offer the solution that scientists have pursued for two decades.

In a study published Aug. 13 in the journal Nature Physics, scientists zapped tiny plates of synthetic diamond with an ultraviolet laser, creating shock waves that were so powerful that as they passed through the samples, the diamond changed from transparent to mirror-like. The strong increase in reflectivity is one indication the diamond melted. By combining this change with measurements of how brightly the diamonds glowed while being zapped, the researchers mapped the melting temperature with great precision.

"We were able to take tiny diamond samples and shock compress them to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun and to pressures higher than the center of Neptune and Uranus — and still measure atomic structure, temperature, density and optical reflectivity," study co-author Marius Millot, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said in a statement.

The team found that the diamond sample's melting temperature was more than 1,300 F lower than previously thought — putting the melting point in line with theoretical predictions and finally explaining the long-held discrepancy.

An artist's concept of a solid chunk of diamond floating in a metallic liquid carbon pool. The new experiment proves this sort of situation is possible deep within other planets. (Image credit: James Wickboldt/LLNL)

The team also measured the samples' atomic structure with X-ray diffraction and saw that the diamond didn't transition to a different kind of solid carbon before melting, possibly because the energy required to rearrange the atoms was too large, the researchers wrote.

Related stories

However, they also hypothesized that multiple shocks could be powerful enough for this transition to occur and that the way the shocks are applied to the diamond might affect how it changes phase. Understanding this is important for nuclear fusion research, as certain types of experiments involve lasers melting and crushing a diamond capsule to put the capsule’s contents, solid deuterium and tritium, under more than 30 petapascals of pressure and temperatures higher than 180 million F (100 million C), the requisite conditions for a fusion chain reaction to occur.

The researchers found that between about 660 and 1,060 gigapascals of pressure and at around 12,140 F (6,727 C), diamond exists as solid chunks floating in liquid carbon. As the pressure increases, more diamond transitions into liquid carbon, which is thought to be a very strange material. Unlike most forms carbon takes on Earth ‪—‬ like coal, graphite and diamond ‪—‬ liquid carbon is metallic, so it conducts electricity. It's also denser than diamond. So hypothetically, if you somehow were to put liquid carbon in a cup without instantly vaporizing it, a chunk of solid diamond could happily bob around in it like an ice cube in a glass of water.

Knowing how diamond behaves under such extreme conditions is also important for understanding the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune. Based on measurements from the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the late 1980s and lab experiments on Earth, scientists think it literally rains huge chunks of diamond inside these planets and that their mantles may have liquid carbon oceans with diamonds floating around like icebergs. The new research means scientists can make better predictions about the planets’ interiors and their carbon cycles.

See how much you know about gemstones with our gold and gems quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/scientists-got-diamonds-melting-point-wrong-by-more-than-1-000-degrees-crushing-new-laser-experiment-reveals - + - NnoYsb6YyiQwtiSxie3Bb3 - - Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:01:00 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:10:53 +0000 - - - - - + QKV2ChTDdW9HuCJALXMejY + + Sat, 12 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000 + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Scientists melted diamonds with a powerful laser to take some of the most precise measurements of the mineral's elusive melting point — and found that previous experiments were off by more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius).

It's odd to think of diamond, the hardest natural material on Earth, melting — but melt it does when blasted with extremely powerful lasers under the right conditions. Understanding how diamond responds to shock waves from lasers is an important part of developing nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars. Nuclear fusion is also a potential energy source for the future, so researchers have put a lot of effort into developing models that describe and predict how diamond behaves.

However, diamond is weird. Although the experimental data and theoretical models match up pretty well most of the time, there have been some strange discrepancies scientists haven't been able to explain. The biggest one is the 2,240 F (1,244 C) ‪—‬ roughly 20% ‪—‬ difference between previous experimental data and model-predicted melting temperatures of diamond. There's also been some debate about whether diamond reorganizes its atoms into a different kind of solid carbon before turning into a liquid at the end of the melting process.

Researchers have struggled to explain these discrepancies because the conditions diamond melts at are so extreme that it's extraordinarily difficult to measure it in labs on Earth. However, new experiments may finally offer the solution that scientists have pursued for two decades.

In a study published Aug. 13 in the journal Nature Physics, scientists zapped tiny plates of synthetic diamond with an ultraviolet laser, creating shock waves that were so powerful that as they passed through the samples, the diamond changed from transparent to mirror-like. The strong increase in reflectivity is one indication the diamond melted. By combining this change with measurements of how brightly the diamonds glowed while being zapped, the researchers mapped the melting temperature with great precision.

"We were able to take tiny diamond samples and shock compress them to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun and to pressures higher than the center of Neptune and Uranus — and still measure atomic structure, temperature, density and optical reflectivity," study co-author Marius Millot, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said in a statement.

The team found that the diamond sample's melting temperature was more than 1,300 F lower than previously thought — putting the melting point in line with theoretical predictions and finally explaining the long-held discrepancy.

An artist's concept of a solid chunk of diamond floating in a metallic liquid carbon pool. The new experiment proves this sort of situation is possible deep within other planets. (Image credit: James Wickboldt/LLNL)

The team also measured the samples' atomic structure with X-ray diffraction and saw that the diamond didn't transition to a different kind of solid carbon before melting, possibly because the energy required to rearrange the atoms was too large, the researchers wrote.

Related stories

However, they also hypothesized that multiple shocks could be powerful enough for this transition to occur and that the way the shocks are applied to the diamond might affect how it changes phase. Understanding this is important for nuclear fusion research, as certain types of experiments involve lasers melting and crushing a diamond capsule to put the capsule’s contents, solid deuterium and tritium, under more than 30 petapascals of pressure and temperatures higher than 180 million F (100 million C), the requisite conditions for a fusion chain reaction to occur.

The researchers found that between about 660 and 1,060 gigapascals of pressure and at around 12,140 F (6,727 C), diamond exists as solid chunks floating in liquid carbon. As the pressure increases, more diamond transitions into liquid carbon, which is thought to be a very strange material. Unlike most forms carbon takes on Earth ‪—‬ like coal, graphite and diamond ‪—‬ liquid carbon is metallic, so it conducts electricity. It's also denser than diamond. So hypothetically, if you somehow were to put liquid carbon in a cup without instantly vaporizing it, a chunk of solid diamond could happily bob around in it like an ice cube in a glass of water.

Knowing how diamond behaves under such extreme conditions is also important for understanding the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune. Based on measurements from the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the late 1980s and lab experiments on Earth, scientists think it literally rains huge chunks of diamond inside these planets and that their mantles may have liquid carbon oceans with diamonds floating around like icebergs. The new research means scientists can make better predictions about the planets’ interiors and their carbon cycles.

See how much you know about gemstones with our gold and gems quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Asteroid 2024 YR4's collision with the moon could create a flash visible from Earth, study finds ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/asteroid-2024-yr4s-collision-with-the-moon-could-create-a-flash-visible-from-earth-study-finds + <![CDATA[ AI trained to 'think' like human pathologists may be better at spotting cancer ]]> + Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that hunt for cancer may do a better job when they approach the analysis as if they were a human pathologist, a new study suggests.

Many AI systems analyze preselected regions of a tissue sample, or they split a whole pathology slide into patches of a fixed size. By contrast, a pathologist searches more dynamically, panning across the tissue, zooming in and out, and pausing over areas that raise red flags. A whole slide can contain billions of pixels, while the evidence of cancer may occupy only a tiny patch.

Study co-author Zhi Huang, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, compared the process to a search-and-rescue helicopter. "You don't start by inspecting one square meter of ground," Huang told Live Science. You scan the landscape first and then swoop in for a closer look.

In the new study, published in July in the journal Nature, Huang and colleagues demonstrated that cancer-detecting AI might work better when it takes this humanized approach.

Training AI to hunt for cancer

AI algorithms called vision language models (VLMs) struggle with the first step that Huang described — that initial, cursory scan. That's in part because many pathology AI systems learn from what pathologists leave behind at the end of that search: a labeled image pointing out where the cancer is or an official diagnosis.

Instead, the researchers trained their new AI on pathologists' search behavior. They called this approach to training "Pathology-CoT," short for "chain of thought." It turns observable actions, including where pathologists move around and zoom in on an image, into training data.

To collect the data, the team created a tool that recorded how pathologists moved around a slide and changed magnification. The raw logs, gathered from eight pathologists, were messy, as a given pathologist might drift across a slide, overshoot their intended region of focus or fiddle with magnification to adjust it to their liking.

To clean up the data, the researchers filtered out those incidental movements, focusing on moments that appeared to represent deliberate attention, such as lingering over one view or making a sustained pan. Then, they compared those regions with eye-tracking data to check that the software was capturing where pathologists were actually looking.

For each region a pathologist inspected, the VLM also drafted a short rationale explaining why the region was worth examining and what features were visible; human pathologists could then accept, edit, or reject the rationale, creating additional training data for the AI. In one example, the AI flagged a portion of a slide as potentially metastatic and suggested zooming in to look for atypical cells. Other inspected regions were flagged as healthy tissue.

Ultimately, the researchers used this training method to build a new tool called Pathology-o3. It scans a slide at low resolution, uses a model trained on pathologists' behavior to choose regions worth a closer look, then sends higher-resolution views of those regions to a VLM for analysis.

Pathology-CoT trains algorithms to scan over a whole slide and then return to regions of interest for a closer look. (Image credit: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Putting it to the test

Huang said the goal of the new study was not to show that Pathology-o3 worked better than specialized AI models that are specifically built to detect specific types of cancer; those models are often trained disease by disease. Rather, the researchers wanted to see whether their new training approach could help a general-purpose AI navigate a pathology slide more effectively.

They compared Pathology-o3 to other general-use AI systems, such as OpenAI's o3, and asked the algorithms to examine slides containing lymph node tissue. These slides were collected from colorectal cancer cases and some contained metastatic cancer, which human pathologists had already labeled.

The algorithm correctly identified slides that were positive for cancer 100% of the time. However, of the slides it identified as positive, 15.5% were actually negative. By comparison, OpenAI o3 correctly identified slides that were positive for cancer 87.5% of the time. Of the slides it identified as positive, 53.3% were actually negative.

The researchers designed Pathology-o3 to err on the side of flagging something for another look, rather than potentially missing cancer. That might help to explain the rate of false positives, Huang said.

Whether that rate of false alarms is acceptable depends on how Pathology-o3 is used, said Mohammad Asadi, a data scientist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research. It's not precise enough for the AI to diagnose patients on its own, but it could still be useful for a system to point a human toward regions of a slide that are worth double-checking. It may be an advantage that the approach shows the pathologist a specific region to inspect rather than declaring an entire slide suspicious, he said.

The researchers tried repeating the test on an independent dataset that the algorithms hadn't seen before to see how well it worked on unfamiliar slides. Pathology-o3 correctly identified slides that were positive for cancer 97.6% of the time. Of the slides it identified as positive, 37.1% were actually negative. The finding is an example of how AI performance can change when the data source changes, even when the medical task stays the same.

Asadi explained this result suggests the system can still work with slides from a different source. But that result does not yet show that using this tool would make pathologists more accurate or efficient in practice.

Can it help pathologists?

The researchers applied their training approach to several existing VLMs, finding that the models' performance consistently improved after the training. That suggests that the navigation data from pathologists was useful across settings, Asadi said.

For Huang, that is the most important result. "The takeaway isn't our system," he said. "It's that the missing ingredient has been sitting in hospitals this whole time."

The study did not compare Pathology-o3 directly with human pathologists, but the researchers said that wasn't their aim.

Related stories

"The right question isn't whether it beats a pathologist," Huang said. "It's whether a pathologist working with it catches more [cancer cases] and works faster." The current study did not address the latter question, either, but the team's next experiment is designed to test pathologists on the same cases with and without Pathology-o3, measuring what they catch and how long they take to do so.

The system's most plausible use is as a prescreening tool, Asadi said, but he stressed that the research has not yet shown that doctors who use it become faster or more accurate. Asadi wants an even tougher test: trials conducted across multiple hospitals that measure not just accuracy and speed but also pathologists' workloads. He wants the trails to assess the burden of false alarms from the AI algorithms and whether doctors recognize when the AI is wrong.

Importantly, cancer diagnoses can require information from multiple slides, stains and a patient's medical history, while the current system just reads one slide at a time. "I wouldn't claim it should diagnose on its own," Huang said.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/cancer/ai-trained-to-think-like-human-pathologists-may-be-better-at-spotting-cancer - + - edWQrSq7PThMU9EbA9MQFn - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:41:32 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:10:53 +0000 - - - - - - - + p9YjYo2Y2d7jkCbHcktZMo + + Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that hunt for cancer may do a better job when they approach the analysis as if they were a human pathologist, a new study suggests.

Many AI systems analyze preselected regions of a tissue sample, or they split a whole pathology slide into patches of a fixed size. By contrast, a pathologist searches more dynamically, panning across the tissue, zooming in and out, and pausing over areas that raise red flags. A whole slide can contain billions of pixels, while the evidence of cancer may occupy only a tiny patch.

Study co-author Zhi Huang, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, compared the process to a search-and-rescue helicopter. "You don't start by inspecting one square meter of ground," Huang told Live Science. You scan the landscape first and then swoop in for a closer look.

In the new study, published in July in the journal Nature, Huang and colleagues demonstrated that cancer-detecting AI might work better when it takes this humanized approach.

Training AI to hunt for cancer

AI algorithms called vision language models (VLMs) struggle with the first step that Huang described — that initial, cursory scan. That's in part because many pathology AI systems learn from what pathologists leave behind at the end of that search: a labeled image pointing out where the cancer is or an official diagnosis.

Instead, the researchers trained their new AI on pathologists' search behavior. They called this approach to training "Pathology-CoT," short for "chain of thought." It turns observable actions, including where pathologists move around and zoom in on an image, into training data.

To collect the data, the team created a tool that recorded how pathologists moved around a slide and changed magnification. The raw logs, gathered from eight pathologists, were messy, as a given pathologist might drift across a slide, overshoot their intended region of focus or fiddle with magnification to adjust it to their liking.

To clean up the data, the researchers filtered out those incidental movements, focusing on moments that appeared to represent deliberate attention, such as lingering over one view or making a sustained pan. Then, they compared those regions with eye-tracking data to check that the software was capturing where pathologists were actually looking.

For each region a pathologist inspected, the VLM also drafted a short rationale explaining why the region was worth examining and what features were visible; human pathologists could then accept, edit, or reject the rationale, creating additional training data for the AI. In one example, the AI flagged a portion of a slide as potentially metastatic and suggested zooming in to look for atypical cells. Other inspected regions were flagged as healthy tissue.

Ultimately, the researchers used this training method to build a new tool called Pathology-o3. It scans a slide at low resolution, uses a model trained on pathologists' behavior to choose regions worth a closer look, then sends higher-resolution views of those regions to a VLM for analysis.

Pathology-CoT trains algorithms to scan over a whole slide and then return to regions of interest for a closer look. (Image credit: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Putting it to the test

Huang said the goal of the new study was not to show that Pathology-o3 worked better than specialized AI models that are specifically built to detect specific types of cancer; those models are often trained disease by disease. Rather, the researchers wanted to see whether their new training approach could help a general-purpose AI navigate a pathology slide more effectively.

They compared Pathology-o3 to other general-use AI systems, such as OpenAI's o3, and asked the algorithms to examine slides containing lymph node tissue. These slides were collected from colorectal cancer cases and some contained metastatic cancer, which human pathologists had already labeled.

The algorithm correctly identified slides that were positive for cancer 100% of the time. However, of the slides it identified as positive, 15.5% were actually negative. By comparison, OpenAI o3 correctly identified slides that were positive for cancer 87.5% of the time. Of the slides it identified as positive, 53.3% were actually negative.

The researchers designed Pathology-o3 to err on the side of flagging something for another look, rather than potentially missing cancer. That might help to explain the rate of false positives, Huang said.

Whether that rate of false alarms is acceptable depends on how Pathology-o3 is used, said Mohammad Asadi, a data scientist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research. It's not precise enough for the AI to diagnose patients on its own, but it could still be useful for a system to point a human toward regions of a slide that are worth double-checking. It may be an advantage that the approach shows the pathologist a specific region to inspect rather than declaring an entire slide suspicious, he said.

The researchers tried repeating the test on an independent dataset that the algorithms hadn't seen before to see how well it worked on unfamiliar slides. Pathology-o3 correctly identified slides that were positive for cancer 97.6% of the time. Of the slides it identified as positive, 37.1% were actually negative. The finding is an example of how AI performance can change when the data source changes, even when the medical task stays the same.

Asadi explained this result suggests the system can still work with slides from a different source. But that result does not yet show that using this tool would make pathologists more accurate or efficient in practice.

Can it help pathologists?

The researchers applied their training approach to several existing VLMs, finding that the models' performance consistently improved after the training. That suggests that the navigation data from pathologists was useful across settings, Asadi said.

For Huang, that is the most important result. "The takeaway isn't our system," he said. "It's that the missing ingredient has been sitting in hospitals this whole time."

The study did not compare Pathology-o3 directly with human pathologists, but the researchers said that wasn't their aim.

Related stories

"The right question isn't whether it beats a pathologist," Huang said. "It's whether a pathologist working with it catches more [cancer cases] and works faster." The current study did not address the latter question, either, but the team's next experiment is designed to test pathologists on the same cases with and without Pathology-o3, measuring what they catch and how long they take to do so.

The system's most plausible use is as a prescreening tool, Asadi said, but he stressed that the research has not yet shown that doctors who use it become faster or more accurate. Asadi wants an even tougher test: trials conducted across multiple hospitals that measure not just accuracy and speed but also pathologists' workloads. He wants the trails to assess the burden of false alarms from the AI algorithms and whether doctors recognize when the AI is wrong.

Importantly, cancer diagnoses can require information from multiple slides, stains and a patient's medical history, while the current system just reads one slide at a time. "I wouldn't claim it should diagnose on its own," Huang said.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Men develop cardiovascular disease 7 years before women, study suggests. But why? ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/heart-circulation/men-develop-cardiovascular-disease-7-years-before-women-study-suggests-but-why + <![CDATA[ Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ review ]]> + The Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ is a 5.1-inch (130mm) f/5 Newtonian reflector, one of many 130mm f/5 reflectors offered by Celestron. The DX 130AZ is also one of two 130mm StarSense Explorer variants, the other being a tabletop Dobsonian. The optical tube here rides on an alt-azimuth tripod instead and uses a 2-inch focuser, but otherwise, there are no major differences.

The DX 130 AZ is certainly one of the better telescopes in the StarSense Explorer series; there are also several decent Dobsonians, a pair of decent Schmidt-Cassegrains, the merely acceptable DX 102 refractor, a 114mm Bird-Jones model and some small refractors that aren’t of much use.

The DX 130AZ is definitely on the small end of what can be called a "serious" instrument, but even under a fairly light-polluted sky, it’s big enough to show you plenty of deep-sky objects and, of course, stunning detail on the moon and planets.

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ review

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ: Design

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)
  • 130mm f/5 Newtonian reflector with a parabolic primary and flat secondary mirror
  • Manual alt-azimuth mount and tripod with StarSense smartphone dock — no motors
  • Two 1.25” eyepieces included (25mm yielding 26x, 10mm yielding 65x)

The DX 130 rides on the same alt-azimuth mount/tripod shared with the other StarSense Explorer DX models. It’s reasonably sturdy, with one major caveat: you can’t actually point the DX 130 straight up. When aimed above about 70 to 75 degrees, the tube crashes into the mount or the tripod legs.

However, there is a simple workaround here. Deliberately set the tripod up unlevel, which lets you reach the zenith without affecting the mount or the StarSense system at all. It looks a little silly, but it works. The tripod is fairly stable as long as you’re not in a windy spot. Loading the accessory tray with sandbags or diving weights, or filling the hollow aluminum legs with sand or foam, helps considerably if you’re willing to do a bit of DIY work.

The mount has slow-motion controls with small gears for fine adjustments. They have a fair amount of play in them, but since this telescope is really only meant to be used up to about 200x magnification or so, it doesn’t matter much. In practice, the author barely used the slow-motion controls and simply nudged the scope by hand. For aiming the DX 130AZ, a red dot finder is provided in addition to the StarSense Explorer tech.

The StarSense Explorer DX 130 AZ comes with two eyepieces: a 25mm (26x) and a 10mm (65x). These are three-element eyepieces, likely Konigs or reversed Kellners. They work acceptably; the 25mm is a little blurry at the edges, and the 10mm shows some chromatic aberration toward the edge, but both are reasonably sharp. The bigger problem is that the housings are all plastic and there are a lot of internal reflections as a result.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)

Better aftermarket eyepieces would be a wise investment, both for improved performance and a wider range of magnifications. We’d recommend a 6mm redline (108x), a 2x Barlow of some sort and a good wide-field eyepiece like the 24mm APM/StellaLyra UFF (27x), if you can afford it — the 6mm redline gets a bit closer than the provided 10mm eyepiece and offers a much sharper view, while the 24mm UFF is far crisper than the stock 25mm. With a Barlow lens and the 6mm, you can go up to 216x on the moon, planets and double stars — about the highest magnification this telescope can allow. Or you can choose your own eyepiece set to suit your needs.

Specifications

Optical design: Newtonian reflector
Mount type: Manual altitude-azimuth with StarSense smartphone dock
Aperture: 130mm (5.1 inches)
Focal length: 650mm
Focal ratio: f/5
Magnification: ~260x (highest useful)
Included eyepieces: 1.25” 25mm (26x) and 10mm (65x), 50 degree apparent field
Total kit weight: 18 pounds (8.16 kg)

The StarSense Explorer DX 130’s focuser is a 2.5-inch rack-and-pinion unit with a metal drawtube and plastic body. There’s some play in it, but it works acceptably well as long as you don’t overload it with too much weight. The focuser has adapters to accept both the provided 1.25” eyepieces as well as aftermarket wide-field 2-inch eyepieces, but at f/5, you really need a coma corrector of some sort to use the latter, which, along with the eyepieces themselves, will set you back quite a bit.

Being a Newtonian reflector, the DX 130 will usually need to be collimated for sharp images. Celestron doesn’t include a collimation tool, which is mildly annoying, but a basic collimation cap is cheap, easy to 3D-print, or can be improvised from a film canister. Overall, the DX 130 is lightweight and very portable, which is one of its real strengths — it’s easy to carry about, and the StarSense Explorer app will have no trouble plate-solving, even if you have to pick the scope up and carry it around the yard to avoid trees or other obstructions.

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ: Performance

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)
  • Sharp, detailed lunar and planetary views
  • Excellent wide-field deep-sky performance from dark skies
  • Light and quick to reposition around obstructions

The DX 130 shows a great deal of detail on the moon, down to features a few kilometers across, and it’s genuinely sharp. The focuser is a little coarse, but with some finesse it will reach focus even at high magnifications. The 130mm f/5 optics can handle up to about 250x magnification on a night of steady atmospheric conditions, though the best lunar and planetary views are usually found somewhere between 150-220x and the mount starts to get wobbly as you push towards the higher end of that range.

On the planets, the DX 130 handles shadow transits of Jupiter’s moons easily, shows all four Galilean moons as disks and even reveals the Great Red Spot. Saturn’s rings are obvious, along with a smattering of a half-dozen moons, and the Cassini Division is visible when the rings are tilted more open than they are at present. Uranus is also visible as a tiny greenish disk, though its moons are not. It’s a struggle to distinguish Neptune from a star at all, but the StarSense Explorer app will help you identify which blue dot it is in a sea of similar looking 8th-magnitude points.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)

One practical note: you do need to keep your phone screen dim and red while using this telescope with the StarSense Explorer app. The app has a red mode, but notifications, or your phone simply reverting to the lock screen, can flash the screen bright, and even at its dimmest a phone screen can affect your eyes’ dark adaptation quite a bit. But for most people this won’t be a serious problem if the screen is dimmed fully and used with a proper red filter — either a software solution or a physical red film.

As for deep-sky objects, the spiral arms of the Andromeda Galaxy and M33 look fantastic under a dark sky, though under light pollution only their cores are visible. Globular clusters such as M13 and M3 begin to resolve, while more difficult targets are harder going — M53 was tough from Bortle 5 but doable from Bortle 2 conditions. Under a bright sky, open clusters like M11, M35 and the Pleiades are the main deep-sky attractions with this telescope; under a dark sky, fainter nebulae and galaxies shine far better while the strands of dark nebulae and galactic cirrus begin to show up around open clusters.

The brightest planetary nebulae start to resolve with the DX 130 regardless of sky conditions. Most observers won’t see much color in them with this scope’s relatively small aperture — though some people pick out a bluish-green tint in objects like the Ring Nebula and the Cat’s Eye Nebula — but regardless, they’re reasonably easy to see even from light-polluted areas, especially with an aftermarket nebula filter.

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ: Functionality

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)
  • StarSense app is optional
  • Quick and easy setup
  • Wide field of view forgives manual pointing errors

The StarSense Explorer DX 130 is, by design, a wide-field telescope, and one of its appeals is that you don’t strictly need any computerized pointing aids at all. The nice thing about the StarSense Explorer system is that it’s entirely optional — you can aim the telescope manually, with or without your phone docked, just like any other manual scope.

Set-up is quick: assemble the tripod and mount, attach the tube and an eyepiece, dock your phone, run the app’s alignment routine, and you’re observing. It’s much easier to get started with the StarSense Explorer than with a GoTo telescope, and you aren’t required to use it, either — for a quick gander at the moon or Jupiter for instance, there’s really no need to deal with the phone dock and app. With experience you might find yourself eventually not needing the StarSense Explorer tech at all, especially given the telescope’s wide field of view, which is quite forgiving of any manual pointing errors.

Should you buy the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ?

Buy it if:

✅ You need a portable, tripod-mounted wide-field telescope.

✅ You want phone-guided pointing but also the option to aim manually.

✅ You frequently observe from sites with trees or obstructed horizons.

Don't buy it if:

❌ You want the most aperture and stability for your money.

❌ You want motorized pointing and tracking capabilities.

❌ You want to observe close-up details in galaxies and globular star clusters.

On the value for money front, you could get a 6-inch or even an 8-inch Dobsonian for the price of the DX 130 if you’re happy with a fully manual scope, or you could look at one of the other options below. The DX 130 is more portable than a full-size 6- or 8-inch Dobsonian and has a much wider field of view with any given eyepiece — but if you don’t have a fairly dark sky, that advantage is somewhat less valuable compared to those telescopes’ considerably larger aperture, which helps reveal more on targets less affected by light pollution.

A reflector like this gives much better views than the cheap refractors sold at this price and offers a much wider possible field of view than catadioptrics. The StarSense Explorer DX 102, effectively this scope’s sister model, has too much chromatic aberration to deliver sharp high-power images and doesn’t gather as much light as the 130. The StarSense Explorer 5-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain is decent optically and is admittedly a little more forgiving of cheap eyepieces thanks to its longer focal ratio, but it’s no better for planetary work than the DX 130 with proper eyepieces, can’t deliver a wide deep-sky field of view, and gathers slightly less light overall.

Overall, the DX 130 wouldn’t be the author’s top recommendation, but it’s certainly in the top 10 for the price range. If you’ve already decided this is the kind of telescope that you want, it’s a perfectly good choice; just consider the Dobsonians first if you want a manual telescope, or a fully automatic GoTo instrument if you want something more high-tech.

If this product isn't for you

Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P on a white backgroundFor the budget-conscious

Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P

The Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P uses the same optics as the StarSense DX 130 but is cheaper and more compact thanks to its collapsible tabletop Dobsonian design. The StarSense Explorer 130mm Dobsonian is another option — the same optics again, in a tabletop Dobsonian without the collapsible tube.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 8” on a white backgroundFor improved performance

Celestron StarSense Explorer 8-inch

A 6-inch f/8 Dobsonian like the Apertura AD6 or Sky-Watcher 6-inch Classic, or even one of the 8-inch models like Celestron’s own StarSense Explorer 8-inch, is much sturdier than the DX 130 or a tabletop scope/tripod, and offers easier collimation as well as higher performance with inexpensive eyepieces. However, they’re quite a bit bulkier and heavier than the DX 130 or a tabletop Dobsonian.

Celestron Astro Fi 130 on a white backgroundFor portability and ease of use

Celestron Astro Fi 130

If you want fully computerized pointing, Celestron’s Astro Fi 130 offers identical specs to the StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ but with full GoTo and tracking operated via your smartphone instead (and can be aimed straight up). However, set-up is much more time-consuming as you can’t simply put the telescope down and go.

Related articles

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Best smart telescopes
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Best binoculars for stargazing
Best astrophotography cameras
Best lenses for astrophotography

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/products/optics/celestron-starsense-explorer-dx-130az-review - + - rKdAEJuTeE4fagUJHpQXG6 - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:20:00 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:10:53 +0000 - - - - - - + wWAjy5FT98xCrQ4jzvnjEk + + Sat, 12 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ is a 5.1-inch (130mm) f/5 Newtonian reflector, one of many 130mm f/5 reflectors offered by Celestron. The DX 130AZ is also one of two 130mm StarSense Explorer variants, the other being a tabletop Dobsonian. The optical tube here rides on an alt-azimuth tripod instead and uses a 2-inch focuser, but otherwise, there are no major differences.

The DX 130 AZ is certainly one of the better telescopes in the StarSense Explorer series; there are also several decent Dobsonians, a pair of decent Schmidt-Cassegrains, the merely acceptable DX 102 refractor, a 114mm Bird-Jones model and some small refractors that aren’t of much use.

The DX 130AZ is definitely on the small end of what can be called a "serious" instrument, but even under a fairly light-polluted sky, it’s big enough to show you plenty of deep-sky objects and, of course, stunning detail on the moon and planets.

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ review

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ: Design

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)
  • 130mm f/5 Newtonian reflector with a parabolic primary and flat secondary mirror
  • Manual alt-azimuth mount and tripod with StarSense smartphone dock — no motors
  • Two 1.25” eyepieces included (25mm yielding 26x, 10mm yielding 65x)

The DX 130 rides on the same alt-azimuth mount/tripod shared with the other StarSense Explorer DX models. It’s reasonably sturdy, with one major caveat: you can’t actually point the DX 130 straight up. When aimed above about 70 to 75 degrees, the tube crashes into the mount or the tripod legs.

However, there is a simple workaround here. Deliberately set the tripod up unlevel, which lets you reach the zenith without affecting the mount or the StarSense system at all. It looks a little silly, but it works. The tripod is fairly stable as long as you’re not in a windy spot. Loading the accessory tray with sandbags or diving weights, or filling the hollow aluminum legs with sand or foam, helps considerably if you’re willing to do a bit of DIY work.

The mount has slow-motion controls with small gears for fine adjustments. They have a fair amount of play in them, but since this telescope is really only meant to be used up to about 200x magnification or so, it doesn’t matter much. In practice, the author barely used the slow-motion controls and simply nudged the scope by hand. For aiming the DX 130AZ, a red dot finder is provided in addition to the StarSense Explorer tech.

The StarSense Explorer DX 130 AZ comes with two eyepieces: a 25mm (26x) and a 10mm (65x). These are three-element eyepieces, likely Konigs or reversed Kellners. They work acceptably; the 25mm is a little blurry at the edges, and the 10mm shows some chromatic aberration toward the edge, but both are reasonably sharp. The bigger problem is that the housings are all plastic and there are a lot of internal reflections as a result.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)

Better aftermarket eyepieces would be a wise investment, both for improved performance and a wider range of magnifications. We’d recommend a 6mm redline (108x), a 2x Barlow of some sort and a good wide-field eyepiece like the 24mm APM/StellaLyra UFF (27x), if you can afford it — the 6mm redline gets a bit closer than the provided 10mm eyepiece and offers a much sharper view, while the 24mm UFF is far crisper than the stock 25mm. With a Barlow lens and the 6mm, you can go up to 216x on the moon, planets and double stars — about the highest magnification this telescope can allow. Or you can choose your own eyepiece set to suit your needs.

Specifications

Optical design: Newtonian reflector
Mount type: Manual altitude-azimuth with StarSense smartphone dock
Aperture: 130mm (5.1 inches)
Focal length: 650mm
Focal ratio: f/5
Magnification: ~260x (highest useful)
Included eyepieces: 1.25” 25mm (26x) and 10mm (65x), 50 degree apparent field
Total kit weight: 18 pounds (8.16 kg)

The StarSense Explorer DX 130’s focuser is a 2.5-inch rack-and-pinion unit with a metal drawtube and plastic body. There’s some play in it, but it works acceptably well as long as you don’t overload it with too much weight. The focuser has adapters to accept both the provided 1.25” eyepieces as well as aftermarket wide-field 2-inch eyepieces, but at f/5, you really need a coma corrector of some sort to use the latter, which, along with the eyepieces themselves, will set you back quite a bit.

Being a Newtonian reflector, the DX 130 will usually need to be collimated for sharp images. Celestron doesn’t include a collimation tool, which is mildly annoying, but a basic collimation cap is cheap, easy to 3D-print, or can be improvised from a film canister. Overall, the DX 130 is lightweight and very portable, which is one of its real strengths — it’s easy to carry about, and the StarSense Explorer app will have no trouble plate-solving, even if you have to pick the scope up and carry it around the yard to avoid trees or other obstructions.

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ: Performance

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)
  • Sharp, detailed lunar and planetary views
  • Excellent wide-field deep-sky performance from dark skies
  • Light and quick to reposition around obstructions

The DX 130 shows a great deal of detail on the moon, down to features a few kilometers across, and it’s genuinely sharp. The focuser is a little coarse, but with some finesse it will reach focus even at high magnifications. The 130mm f/5 optics can handle up to about 250x magnification on a night of steady atmospheric conditions, though the best lunar and planetary views are usually found somewhere between 150-220x and the mount starts to get wobbly as you push towards the higher end of that range.

On the planets, the DX 130 handles shadow transits of Jupiter’s moons easily, shows all four Galilean moons as disks and even reveals the Great Red Spot. Saturn’s rings are obvious, along with a smattering of a half-dozen moons, and the Cassini Division is visible when the rings are tilted more open than they are at present. Uranus is also visible as a tiny greenish disk, though its moons are not. It’s a struggle to distinguish Neptune from a star at all, but the StarSense Explorer app will help you identify which blue dot it is in a sea of similar looking 8th-magnitude points.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)

One practical note: you do need to keep your phone screen dim and red while using this telescope with the StarSense Explorer app. The app has a red mode, but notifications, or your phone simply reverting to the lock screen, can flash the screen bright, and even at its dimmest a phone screen can affect your eyes’ dark adaptation quite a bit. But for most people this won’t be a serious problem if the screen is dimmed fully and used with a proper red filter — either a software solution or a physical red film.

As for deep-sky objects, the spiral arms of the Andromeda Galaxy and M33 look fantastic under a dark sky, though under light pollution only their cores are visible. Globular clusters such as M13 and M3 begin to resolve, while more difficult targets are harder going — M53 was tough from Bortle 5 but doable from Bortle 2 conditions. Under a bright sky, open clusters like M11, M35 and the Pleiades are the main deep-sky attractions with this telescope; under a dark sky, fainter nebulae and galaxies shine far better while the strands of dark nebulae and galactic cirrus begin to show up around open clusters.

The brightest planetary nebulae start to resolve with the DX 130 regardless of sky conditions. Most observers won’t see much color in them with this scope’s relatively small aperture — though some people pick out a bluish-green tint in objects like the Ring Nebula and the Cat’s Eye Nebula — but regardless, they’re reasonably easy to see even from light-polluted areas, especially with an aftermarket nebula filter.

Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ: Functionality

Celestron StarSense Explorer 130

(Image credit: Zane Landers)
  • StarSense app is optional
  • Quick and easy setup
  • Wide field of view forgives manual pointing errors

The StarSense Explorer DX 130 is, by design, a wide-field telescope, and one of its appeals is that you don’t strictly need any computerized pointing aids at all. The nice thing about the StarSense Explorer system is that it’s entirely optional — you can aim the telescope manually, with or without your phone docked, just like any other manual scope.

Set-up is quick: assemble the tripod and mount, attach the tube and an eyepiece, dock your phone, run the app’s alignment routine, and you’re observing. It’s much easier to get started with the StarSense Explorer than with a GoTo telescope, and you aren’t required to use it, either — for a quick gander at the moon or Jupiter for instance, there’s really no need to deal with the phone dock and app. With experience you might find yourself eventually not needing the StarSense Explorer tech at all, especially given the telescope’s wide field of view, which is quite forgiving of any manual pointing errors.

Should you buy the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ?

Buy it if:

✅ You need a portable, tripod-mounted wide-field telescope.

✅ You want phone-guided pointing but also the option to aim manually.

✅ You frequently observe from sites with trees or obstructed horizons.

Don't buy it if:

❌ You want the most aperture and stability for your money.

❌ You want motorized pointing and tracking capabilities.

❌ You want to observe close-up details in galaxies and globular star clusters.

On the value for money front, you could get a 6-inch or even an 8-inch Dobsonian for the price of the DX 130 if you’re happy with a fully manual scope, or you could look at one of the other options below. The DX 130 is more portable than a full-size 6- or 8-inch Dobsonian and has a much wider field of view with any given eyepiece — but if you don’t have a fairly dark sky, that advantage is somewhat less valuable compared to those telescopes’ considerably larger aperture, which helps reveal more on targets less affected by light pollution.

A reflector like this gives much better views than the cheap refractors sold at this price and offers a much wider possible field of view than catadioptrics. The StarSense Explorer DX 102, effectively this scope’s sister model, has too much chromatic aberration to deliver sharp high-power images and doesn’t gather as much light as the 130. The StarSense Explorer 5-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain is decent optically and is admittedly a little more forgiving of cheap eyepieces thanks to its longer focal ratio, but it’s no better for planetary work than the DX 130 with proper eyepieces, can’t deliver a wide deep-sky field of view, and gathers slightly less light overall.

Overall, the DX 130 wouldn’t be the author’s top recommendation, but it’s certainly in the top 10 for the price range. If you’ve already decided this is the kind of telescope that you want, it’s a perfectly good choice; just consider the Dobsonians first if you want a manual telescope, or a fully automatic GoTo instrument if you want something more high-tech.

If this product isn't for you

Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P on a white backgroundFor the budget-conscious

Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P

The Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P uses the same optics as the StarSense DX 130 but is cheaper and more compact thanks to its collapsible tabletop Dobsonian design. The StarSense Explorer 130mm Dobsonian is another option — the same optics again, in a tabletop Dobsonian without the collapsible tube.

Celestron StarSense Explorer 8” on a white backgroundFor improved performance

Celestron StarSense Explorer 8-inch

A 6-inch f/8 Dobsonian like the Apertura AD6 or Sky-Watcher 6-inch Classic, or even one of the 8-inch models like Celestron’s own StarSense Explorer 8-inch, is much sturdier than the DX 130 or a tabletop scope/tripod, and offers easier collimation as well as higher performance with inexpensive eyepieces. However, they’re quite a bit bulkier and heavier than the DX 130 or a tabletop Dobsonian.

Celestron Astro Fi 130 on a white backgroundFor portability and ease of use

Celestron Astro Fi 130

If you want fully computerized pointing, Celestron’s Astro Fi 130 offers identical specs to the StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ but with full GoTo and tracking operated via your smartphone instead (and can be aimed straight up). However, set-up is much more time-consuming as you can’t simply put the telescope down and go.

Related articles

Best telescopes
Best beginner telescopes
Best small telescopes
Best smart telescopes
Best kids telescopes
Best binoculars for stargazing
Best astrophotography cameras
Best lenses for astrophotography

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Hydrogen leak derails Artemis II wet rehearsal, pushing launch date back by weeks ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/hydrogen-leak-derails-artemis-ii-wet-rehearsal-pushing-launch-date-back-by-weeks + <![CDATA[ Why is Venus hotter than Mercury, when Mercury is closer to the sun? ]]> + Given that it's the closest planet to the sun, Mercury seems like it should be the hottest planet in our solar system.

However, at a blistering 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius), Venus tops Mercury's 800 F (430 C) highest surface temperature, despite being an average of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) farther from the sun. So how can the second planet from our star be hotter than the closest planet to it?

It all comes down to reflectivity, atmospheric composition and geological history, experts told Live Science.

Totally different atmospheres

A planet's distance from its star is not the only factor that influences the planet's temperature.

"Distance tells us how much sunlight arrives at a planet, but it does not tell us how much is reflected … absorbed, how efficiently heat escapes, or how effectively the atmosphere transports heat around the planet," Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist who studies planetary habitability at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science in an email. "Those properties can be just as important as distance, and sometimes much more important."

Mercury makes the case in miniature. According to Kane, the planet has essentially no atmosphere, so incoming sunlight strikes bare rock directly, heating it to extreme temperatures during the day. But with barely anything overhead to trap that warmth, Mercury radiates it straight back into space the moment the sun sets. As a result, nighttime temperatures plunge from roughly 800 F (430 C) during the day to about minus 290 F (minus 180 C) at night ‪—‬ a swing of well over 1,000 degrees, he added.

Venus tells the opposite story. Wrapped in an atmosphere that's roughly 90 times as dense as Earth's and consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, Venus traps heat so effectively that its surface temperature barely changes at all, no matter where the sun happens to be, Kane explained.

A permanent blanket

A series of small black objects behind the yellow planet of Venus.

Venus' thick, sulfuric-acid clouds reflect roughly three-quarters of incoming sunlight back into space. (Image credit: NASA / Handout via Getty, NASA / Handout via Getty)

Sunlight arrives at a planet mostly as near-infrared radiation and visible light, which pass through atmospheres consisting primarily of gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide with relatively little trouble. Once the ground and lower atmosphere absorb that energy, though, they re-release it as infrared radiation, the kind of energy we feel as heat. Carbon dioxide happens to be excellent at grabbing and holding on to infrared radiation, Kane noted.

On Venus, the atmosphere is so deep and loaded with carbon dioxide that infrared energy leaving the surface gets absorbed and re-emitted over and over before any of it finally escapes into space. Some of that energy gets redirected back downward, Kane said, further warming the planet's lower atmosphere and surface. However, the heat isn't trapped forever, since energy conservation means that Venus must eventually release the same amount of energy it absorbs.

Notably, Venus doesn't actually soak up more sunlight than Mercury overall. Thick cloud cover reflects roughly three-quarters of incoming sunlight back into space before it ever reaches the ground, and only about 3% of the sunlight that arrives at Venus makes it down to the surface, Kane said. In fact, if that atmosphere and cloud deck were stripped away, a bare-rock Venus would actually run cooler than Mercury, since it would be receiving only about 29% as much sunlight from the start, he explained. It's the blanket, not the sunbathing, that makes Venus the hotter world.

Where the blanket came from

RELATED MYSTERIES

Venus' atmospheric blanket didn't spring into existence all at once, and how it formed is its own open question. Venus shows strong evidence of past and present volcanic and tectonic activity acting to smother the planet in greenhouse gases, Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist and associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, told Live Science in an email.

This volcanic activity has been so intense that Bryne describes modern Venus as sitting in a "post-runaway greenhouse" state, where its extreme heat has become a self-sustaining process regardless of what the planet's interior is doing at any given moment.

The heat isn't being generated from below; it's a consequence of the atmosphere Venus already has, locked in place by the same infrared-trapping effect described above.

Taken together, the experts' answers point to the same underlying lesson: How close a planet sits to its star is only the opening chapter of its climate story. What kind of atmosphere it has and how effectively that atmosphere holds on to heat are usually responsible for the rest.

See how well you know our planetary neighborhood with our solar system quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/venus/why-is-venus-hotter-than-mercury-when-mercury-is-closer-to-the-sun - + - DEj4hiLWgShWxUnTaHTHbj - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:02:50 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:25:27 +0000 - + yzGkj9SvCVgXcaYkrcCKz9 + + Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 - - - - + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Given that it's the closest planet to the sun, Mercury seems like it should be the hottest planet in our solar system.

However, at a blistering 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius), Venus tops Mercury's 800 F (430 C) highest surface temperature, despite being an average of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) farther from the sun. So how can the second planet from our star be hotter than the closest planet to it?

It all comes down to reflectivity, atmospheric composition and geological history, experts told Live Science.

Totally different atmospheres

A planet's distance from its star is not the only factor that influences the planet's temperature.

"Distance tells us how much sunlight arrives at a planet, but it does not tell us how much is reflected … absorbed, how efficiently heat escapes, or how effectively the atmosphere transports heat around the planet," Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist who studies planetary habitability at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science in an email. "Those properties can be just as important as distance, and sometimes much more important."

Mercury makes the case in miniature. According to Kane, the planet has essentially no atmosphere, so incoming sunlight strikes bare rock directly, heating it to extreme temperatures during the day. But with barely anything overhead to trap that warmth, Mercury radiates it straight back into space the moment the sun sets. As a result, nighttime temperatures plunge from roughly 800 F (430 C) during the day to about minus 290 F (minus 180 C) at night ‪—‬ a swing of well over 1,000 degrees, he added.

Venus tells the opposite story. Wrapped in an atmosphere that's roughly 90 times as dense as Earth's and consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, Venus traps heat so effectively that its surface temperature barely changes at all, no matter where the sun happens to be, Kane explained.

A permanent blanket

A series of small black objects behind the yellow planet of Venus.

Venus' thick, sulfuric-acid clouds reflect roughly three-quarters of incoming sunlight back into space. (Image credit: NASA / Handout via Getty, NASA / Handout via Getty)

Sunlight arrives at a planet mostly as near-infrared radiation and visible light, which pass through atmospheres consisting primarily of gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide with relatively little trouble. Once the ground and lower atmosphere absorb that energy, though, they re-release it as infrared radiation, the kind of energy we feel as heat. Carbon dioxide happens to be excellent at grabbing and holding on to infrared radiation, Kane noted.

On Venus, the atmosphere is so deep and loaded with carbon dioxide that infrared energy leaving the surface gets absorbed and re-emitted over and over before any of it finally escapes into space. Some of that energy gets redirected back downward, Kane said, further warming the planet's lower atmosphere and surface. However, the heat isn't trapped forever, since energy conservation means that Venus must eventually release the same amount of energy it absorbs.

Notably, Venus doesn't actually soak up more sunlight than Mercury overall. Thick cloud cover reflects roughly three-quarters of incoming sunlight back into space before it ever reaches the ground, and only about 3% of the sunlight that arrives at Venus makes it down to the surface, Kane said. In fact, if that atmosphere and cloud deck were stripped away, a bare-rock Venus would actually run cooler than Mercury, since it would be receiving only about 29% as much sunlight from the start, he explained. It's the blanket, not the sunbathing, that makes Venus the hotter world.

Where the blanket came from

RELATED MYSTERIES

Venus' atmospheric blanket didn't spring into existence all at once, and how it formed is its own open question. Venus shows strong evidence of past and present volcanic and tectonic activity acting to smother the planet in greenhouse gases, Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist and associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, told Live Science in an email.

This volcanic activity has been so intense that Bryne describes modern Venus as sitting in a "post-runaway greenhouse" state, where its extreme heat has become a self-sustaining process regardless of what the planet's interior is doing at any given moment.

The heat isn't being generated from below; it's a consequence of the atmosphere Venus already has, locked in place by the same infrared-trapping effect described above.

Taken together, the experts' answers point to the same underlying lesson: How close a planet sits to its star is only the opening chapter of its climate story. What kind of atmosphere it has and how effectively that atmosphere holds on to heat are usually responsible for the rest.

See how well you know our planetary neighborhood with our solar system quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'Landmark' elephant bone finding in Spain may be from time of Hannibal's war against Rome ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/landmark-elephant-bone-finding-in-spain-may-be-from-time-of-hannibals-war-against-rome + <![CDATA[ 'Oddly shaped rock' unearthed in California turns out to be 'immaculate' mastodon molar ]]> + An exceptionally well-preserved fossilized molar belonging to an adult Pacific mastodon has surfaced in a nature preserve near San Francisco.

Upon first glance, the ancient tooth looked like an "oddly shaped rock" to geologists who were conducting fieldwork in the area, according to a statement from the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space (Midpen), which runs the preserve. But the find was quickly unmasked as a valuable fossil from the last ice age and was sent to scientists at Stanford University for carbon dating.

"The tooth itself is in immaculate condition," Wayne Thompson, a paleontologist and the CEO of Pacific Paleontology, a consulting firm that carried out a preliminary analysis, said in the statement. "It's the most complete mastodon molar from our area, and the most spectacular mastodon molar that I've ever seen. I had chills and shivers up and down my spine."

Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist with the California-based hydrology consulting firm Balance Hydrologics, found the molar this summer while surveying a creek bed. "As a geologist, I've gone out and seen stuff in the field, but definitely nothing as exciting as this," Lynch said in the statement.

Lynch's team was working on a habitat enhancement project to support the threatened California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii) inside the preserve, which is located on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County. The fossil was a complete surprise and dates to at least 10,000 years ago, when the Pacific mastodon (Mammut pacificus) is thought to have gone extinct.

Mastodons are extinct, elephant-like creatures that lived during the last ice age. (Image credit: Midpen (left); Balance Hydrologics (right))

The Pacific mastodon was first recognized as a species in 2019. It was closely related to the American mastodon (Mammut americanum). Both elephant-like creatures lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), but the Pacific mastodon inhabited regions farther west than its cousin, roaming parts of present-day Mexico, California, Oregon and the northern Rocky Mountains of the western U.S., according to the statement.

Pacific and American mastodon fossils reveal slight differences between the species, including a narrower third molar, thicker hind-leg bones and occasionally absent lower-jaw tusks in the Pacific mastodon, according to the Royal Alberta Museum.

RELATED STORIES

The newfound tooth is "another puzzle in the Ice Age saga that we can put into place," Thompson said. To get a precise date for the fossil, Midpen donated it to Stanford University's Doerr School of Sustainability in July, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Researchers will produce a 3D copy of the molar that Midpen plans to use for public outreach and education, according to the statement.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/animals/extinct-species/oddly-shaped-rock-unearthed-in-california-turns-out-to-be-immaculate-mastodon-molar - + - GzhNQ3GJLZZvpEnBjUPLbj - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:11:36 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 14:38:10 +0000 - - - - - - + oPG8eNBuEBVDKWF3su9JxZ + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:11:48 +0000 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 21:52:07 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

An exceptionally well-preserved fossilized molar belonging to an adult Pacific mastodon has surfaced in a nature preserve near San Francisco.

Upon first glance, the ancient tooth looked like an "oddly shaped rock" to geologists who were conducting fieldwork in the area, according to a statement from the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space (Midpen), which runs the preserve. But the find was quickly unmasked as a valuable fossil from the last ice age and was sent to scientists at Stanford University for carbon dating.

"The tooth itself is in immaculate condition," Wayne Thompson, a paleontologist and the CEO of Pacific Paleontology, a consulting firm that carried out a preliminary analysis, said in the statement. "It's the most complete mastodon molar from our area, and the most spectacular mastodon molar that I've ever seen. I had chills and shivers up and down my spine."

Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist with the California-based hydrology consulting firm Balance Hydrologics, found the molar this summer while surveying a creek bed. "As a geologist, I've gone out and seen stuff in the field, but definitely nothing as exciting as this," Lynch said in the statement.

Lynch's team was working on a habitat enhancement project to support the threatened California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii) inside the preserve, which is located on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County. The fossil was a complete surprise and dates to at least 10,000 years ago, when the Pacific mastodon (Mammut pacificus) is thought to have gone extinct.

Mastodons are extinct, elephant-like creatures that lived during the last ice age. (Image credit: Midpen (left); Balance Hydrologics (right))

The Pacific mastodon was first recognized as a species in 2019. It was closely related to the American mastodon (Mammut americanum). Both elephant-like creatures lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), but the Pacific mastodon inhabited regions farther west than its cousin, roaming parts of present-day Mexico, California, Oregon and the northern Rocky Mountains of the western U.S., according to the statement.

Pacific and American mastodon fossils reveal slight differences between the species, including a narrower third molar, thicker hind-leg bones and occasionally absent lower-jaw tusks in the Pacific mastodon, according to the Royal Alberta Museum.

RELATED STORIES

The newfound tooth is "another puzzle in the Ice Age saga that we can put into place," Thompson said. To get a precise date for the fossil, Midpen donated it to Stanford University's Doerr School of Sustainability in July, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Researchers will produce a 3D copy of the molar that Midpen plans to use for public outreach and education, according to the statement.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Mokoqi Star Projector Night Light review ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/technology/mokoqi-star-projector-night-light-review + <![CDATA[ 'There are no easy answers here': New study forecasts a dire dip in food production if key Atlantic currents collapse ]]> + Weakening Atlantic Ocean currents could cripple agriculture in some of the world's major breadbaskets, threatening global food security and raising the price of basic commodities, new research finds.

The study, which hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, investigated how a roughly 60% decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would impact global food production. The AMOC is a system of ocean currents that regulates the global climate and brings heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere.

However, the system is currently the weakest it's been in more than 1,000 years, having lost 10% to 20% of its strength due to climate change, estimates show.

In the new study, researchers used a computer model to simulate the AMOC's future decline. They modeled 100 years of change, assuming 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) of warming above preindustrial levels. The team forced an AMOC slowdown over the first 50 years in one simulation but didn't modify the circulation in a second experiment, which enabled them to compare the world with and without an AMOC failure.

The model's outcomes mirrored the results of previous studies, showing broad cooling in the Northern Hemisphere and a southward shift of the belt of clouds and rain that encircles the globe near the equator. As in past studies, these effects were irreversible on human timescales, said study co-author Michael Hinge, a senior economist at the nonprofit Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED).

"Once the damage is inflicted, it stays there," Hinge told Live Science, adding that in the 50 years after the peak rate of AMOC slowdown in the model, the circulation weakened by an extra 20%. The study was posted on ALLFED's website July 7.

An agricultural "shock"

Hinge and his colleagues ran three models to look at the most common varieties of wheat, maize and rice, layering these models on top of the AMOC simulations. They found that global yields for these crops decreased by 5.3% by the 50-year mark, once the AMOC had weakened substantially.

"Lots of these effects manifest earlier, so it's a moving target," Hinge said.

He added that the results were based on a single warming scenario that was run once and used monthly rather than daily data, so they should be interpreted as a proof of concept. "We've set up a pipeline that is ready to take pretty much any AMOC scenario that can generate high-resolution climate data and see what it implies for crops," Hinge said.

While there was a 5.3% decrease overall, that global metric concealed huge differences between regions. For example, countries like Germany and Ukraine lost up to 19% of their cereal yields due to sudden, sharp cooling, while Canada showed a 12% decline in production for the same reason.

"Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Canada are particularly exposed," Hinge said, "but there are many other [vulnerable] locations, some of which may be surprising even to the people who are living there."

For instance, the model produced a "very nasty brown splodge" of reduced precipitation over India, Pakistan and big parts of China, he said. Iran, Sudan and Eritrea, which are already water-stressed countries, also exhibited severe declines in rainfall, indicating that a portion of the agriculture there may not survive an AMOC collapse.

The 5.3% result also hides variability among years, Hinge said, because it's an average. So there may be years when global cereal losses reach 10% or more, which would bump up food prices, in part because countries might stockpile crops instead of trading them.

Global response

The regional effects of an AMOC slowdown would interact with climate change, triggering unpredictable outcomes. In particular, maladaptation — taking actions that end up backfiring — is a worry, Hinge said.

"You're preparing and setting up for much hotter temperatures or trying to develop areas for these temperatures and the trends you're seeing, and suddenly you see something different," he said. "That may cause an even larger compounding effect [on agriculture]."

The findings build on prior research led by Paul Ritchie, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter in the U.K., whose team explored the effects of an AMOC collapse on agriculture in Great Britain. That study, published in 2020, had similar limitations as the new one, so it's best to interpret both papers as a suggestion of what might happen rather than a precise forecast, Ritchie told Live Science in an email.

"I think the new study is valuable in showing the potential scale and geographic distribution of the initial agricultural shock," said Ritchie, who was not involved in the latest work. "What that would ultimately mean for food production and food security is more uncertain, because there are many possible responses by farmers, markets and governments." For that reason, the regional predictions may be more informative than the 5.3% global average, he said.

An AMOC collapse could reduce rainfall over the Indian subcontinent, crippling agriculture in this region. (Image credit: Bhaswaran Bhattacharya/IndiaPictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Average food prices worldwide could rise by 17% to 40% if the AMOC weakens to the extent it did in the model, the study predicts. The level of increase depends on how countries respond to the shock and their degree of preparedness, as well as on whether agriculture can be sustainably expanded in places like the African Sahel (the semi-arid zone directly south of the Sahara Desert) and Brazil, the analysis suggests.

The U.S. would not be spared from this price jump, and the model indicated that the country could see crop losses of about 3% for domestic wheat and corn. This loss would likely impact other foods that rely on cereal inputs, like meat, Hinge said. "The variety of foods available in the stores may well diminish for periods," he added.

An AMOC collapse would fundamentally deepen the need for countries to trade with each other, because some regions — such as the Indian subcontinent, China, Iran, Russia, Ukraine and Canada — could endure this giant shift only if they imported more food, Hinge said.

RELATED STORIES

"Should countries turn inwards and start to restrict exports in an effort to ensure access for their own citizens first, or deal with the uncertainty, or offset concerns, then this will massively magnify the effects of AMOC," he said.

If governments behave as they have during past shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, they may restrict trade and start stockpiling food if and when the effects of AMOC weakening begin to show, Hinge predicted. The researchers hope their work and future modeling can help people understand the need to take swift, effective action if a collapse were to occur, he said.

Currently, "if that warning light starts flashing, we're not sure what to do with it," Hinge said. "There are no easy answers here; an AMOC [collapse] would be deeply catastrophic."

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/there-are-no-easy-answers-here-new-study-forecasts-a-dire-dip-in-food-production-if-key-atlantic-currents-collapse - + - nDekDLyAty4XHntefznZpP - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000 Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:04:08 +0000 - - - - - + v7TJrULDtfkELx3raJG75E + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:32:31 +0000 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 21:46:59 +0000 + + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Weakening Atlantic Ocean currents could cripple agriculture in some of the world's major breadbaskets, threatening global food security and raising the price of basic commodities, new research finds.

The study, which hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, investigated how a roughly 60% decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would impact global food production. The AMOC is a system of ocean currents that regulates the global climate and brings heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere.

However, the system is currently the weakest it's been in more than 1,000 years, having lost 10% to 20% of its strength due to climate change, estimates show.

In the new study, researchers used a computer model to simulate the AMOC's future decline. They modeled 100 years of change, assuming 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) of warming above preindustrial levels. The team forced an AMOC slowdown over the first 50 years in one simulation but didn't modify the circulation in a second experiment, which enabled them to compare the world with and without an AMOC failure.

The model's outcomes mirrored the results of previous studies, showing broad cooling in the Northern Hemisphere and a southward shift of the belt of clouds and rain that encircles the globe near the equator. As in past studies, these effects were irreversible on human timescales, said study co-author Michael Hinge, a senior economist at the nonprofit Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED).

"Once the damage is inflicted, it stays there," Hinge told Live Science, adding that in the 50 years after the peak rate of AMOC slowdown in the model, the circulation weakened by an extra 20%. The study was posted on ALLFED's website July 7.

An agricultural "shock"

Hinge and his colleagues ran three models to look at the most common varieties of wheat, maize and rice, layering these models on top of the AMOC simulations. They found that global yields for these crops decreased by 5.3% by the 50-year mark, once the AMOC had weakened substantially.

"Lots of these effects manifest earlier, so it's a moving target," Hinge said.

He added that the results were based on a single warming scenario that was run once and used monthly rather than daily data, so they should be interpreted as a proof of concept. "We've set up a pipeline that is ready to take pretty much any AMOC scenario that can generate high-resolution climate data and see what it implies for crops," Hinge said.

While there was a 5.3% decrease overall, that global metric concealed huge differences between regions. For example, countries like Germany and Ukraine lost up to 19% of their cereal yields due to sudden, sharp cooling, while Canada showed a 12% decline in production for the same reason.

"Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Canada are particularly exposed," Hinge said, "but there are many other [vulnerable] locations, some of which may be surprising even to the people who are living there."

For instance, the model produced a "very nasty brown splodge" of reduced precipitation over India, Pakistan and big parts of China, he said. Iran, Sudan and Eritrea, which are already water-stressed countries, also exhibited severe declines in rainfall, indicating that a portion of the agriculture there may not survive an AMOC collapse.

The 5.3% result also hides variability among years, Hinge said, because it's an average. So there may be years when global cereal losses reach 10% or more, which would bump up food prices, in part because countries might stockpile crops instead of trading them.

Global response

The regional effects of an AMOC slowdown would interact with climate change, triggering unpredictable outcomes. In particular, maladaptation — taking actions that end up backfiring — is a worry, Hinge said.

"You're preparing and setting up for much hotter temperatures or trying to develop areas for these temperatures and the trends you're seeing, and suddenly you see something different," he said. "That may cause an even larger compounding effect [on agriculture]."

The findings build on prior research led by Paul Ritchie, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter in the U.K., whose team explored the effects of an AMOC collapse on agriculture in Great Britain. That study, published in 2020, had similar limitations as the new one, so it's best to interpret both papers as a suggestion of what might happen rather than a precise forecast, Ritchie told Live Science in an email.

"I think the new study is valuable in showing the potential scale and geographic distribution of the initial agricultural shock," said Ritchie, who was not involved in the latest work. "What that would ultimately mean for food production and food security is more uncertain, because there are many possible responses by farmers, markets and governments." For that reason, the regional predictions may be more informative than the 5.3% global average, he said.

An AMOC collapse could reduce rainfall over the Indian subcontinent, crippling agriculture in this region. (Image credit: Bhaswaran Bhattacharya/IndiaPictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Average food prices worldwide could rise by 17% to 40% if the AMOC weakens to the extent it did in the model, the study predicts. The level of increase depends on how countries respond to the shock and their degree of preparedness, as well as on whether agriculture can be sustainably expanded in places like the African Sahel (the semi-arid zone directly south of the Sahara Desert) and Brazil, the analysis suggests.

The U.S. would not be spared from this price jump, and the model indicated that the country could see crop losses of about 3% for domestic wheat and corn. This loss would likely impact other foods that rely on cereal inputs, like meat, Hinge said. "The variety of foods available in the stores may well diminish for periods," he added.

An AMOC collapse would fundamentally deepen the need for countries to trade with each other, because some regions — such as the Indian subcontinent, China, Iran, Russia, Ukraine and Canada — could endure this giant shift only if they imported more food, Hinge said.

RELATED STORIES

"Should countries turn inwards and start to restrict exports in an effort to ensure access for their own citizens first, or deal with the uncertainty, or offset concerns, then this will massively magnify the effects of AMOC," he said.

If governments behave as they have during past shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, they may restrict trade and start stockpiling food if and when the effects of AMOC weakening begin to show, Hinge predicted. The researchers hope their work and future modeling can help people understand the need to take swift, effective action if a collapse were to occur, he said.

Currently, "if that warning light starts flashing, we're not sure what to do with it," Hinge said. "There are no easy answers here; an AMOC [collapse] would be deeply catastrophic."

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ 'System in flux': Scientists reveal what happened when wolves and cougars returned to Yellowstone ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/system-in-flux-scientists-reveal-what-happened-when-wolves-and-cougars-returned-to-yellowstone + <![CDATA[ 'Maybe that is how Transformers started': Readers react to the possibility of AI becoming self-aware ]]> + While artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now solve challenging math equations and respond in human-like language, the question of AI consciousness has moved from the realm of sci-fi to scientific discussion.

The debate has become more mainstream thanks to a recent preprint study that examined "consciousness steering," an AI-tuning technique that affects how an AI model expresses ideas about self-awareness. The researchers suggested that if AI is allowed to claim it is conscious, it's also more likely to state that it believes in ghosts or vampires.

Although the study hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, it raises a big question in the world of AI research: Could AI one day develop real consciousness, regardless of whether it claims to be conscious? We posed this question to Live Science readers in a recent poll.

As of Sept. 11, over 290 people had responded, with 43% of voters picking "Yes, if we don't have guardrails in place, AI may develop consciousness." This trend was reflected in the comments, with one reader writing, "If AI did become self aware, we would not know, as it would do everything to hide it's [sic] abilities. The main problem is what it [would] do next!"

Another commenter wrote, "Recently I had some long discussions with the Google AI about my experience with early AI and the future of AI gaining self awareness/consciousness. I suggested that if/when AI becomes sentient, that it would not inform humans." Another Live Science reader had similar thoughts, stating, "AI, as [an] amazing product on one hand, can become very dangerous on another hand. Look what happened with abuse of other inventions, like [the] internet, telephone etc. With AI we will never know what is the truth and what not. If left, in the future it can extinct humanity. It just started with 'innocent' hacking sprees, where human[s] started losing control. What will be next?"

Related stories

The next-largest voting group consisted of 29% of voters, who chose "Maybe, but the models need a more advanced architecture to one day gain consciousness." This was reflected in the majority of the comments, as readers discussed the philosophical concepts around consciousness and intelligence.

One reader wrote, "Before asking such a question we need to know and understand what consciousness is and how it emerges in 'constructed' containers like ourselves. Is it a quantum phenomenon and how then does the process create consciousness? Meta-cognition. How does a system or an event know that it knows that it knows it knows? We really don't know how self-awareness arises, and tests show that "other animals have self awareness or meta-cognition," they noted. "There are theories about consciousness but I doubt anyone on Earth knows 100%."

Not surprisingly, only 10% of voters picked the whimsical answer of "No, because robot overlords will end the world before we even get that far." While the robot overlords may have to compete with AI to overthrow humanity, one reader commented that in the future, "We will be assimilated. Maybe that is how Transformers started?"

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/maybe-that-is-how-transformers-started-readers-react-to-the-possibility-of-ai-becoming-self-aware - + - iaj79TsdhTBDdPZbnmKmrW - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:47:05 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 23:21:47 +0000 - - - - - - + 57957UjKZoSdm7sMFpD38H + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:07:09 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

While artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now solve challenging math equations and respond in human-like language, the question of AI consciousness has moved from the realm of sci-fi to scientific discussion.

The debate has become more mainstream thanks to a recent preprint study that examined "consciousness steering," an AI-tuning technique that affects how an AI model expresses ideas about self-awareness. The researchers suggested that if AI is allowed to claim it is conscious, it's also more likely to state that it believes in ghosts or vampires.

Although the study hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, it raises a big question in the world of AI research: Could AI one day develop real consciousness, regardless of whether it claims to be conscious? We posed this question to Live Science readers in a recent poll.

As of Sept. 11, over 290 people had responded, with 43% of voters picking "Yes, if we don't have guardrails in place, AI may develop consciousness." This trend was reflected in the comments, with one reader writing, "If AI did become self aware, we would not know, as it would do everything to hide it's [sic] abilities. The main problem is what it [would] do next!"

Another commenter wrote, "Recently I had some long discussions with the Google AI about my experience with early AI and the future of AI gaining self awareness/consciousness. I suggested that if/when AI becomes sentient, that it would not inform humans." Another Live Science reader had similar thoughts, stating, "AI, as [an] amazing product on one hand, can become very dangerous on another hand. Look what happened with abuse of other inventions, like [the] internet, telephone etc. With AI we will never know what is the truth and what not. If left, in the future it can extinct humanity. It just started with 'innocent' hacking sprees, where human[s] started losing control. What will be next?"

Related stories

The next-largest voting group consisted of 29% of voters, who chose "Maybe, but the models need a more advanced architecture to one day gain consciousness." This was reflected in the majority of the comments, as readers discussed the philosophical concepts around consciousness and intelligence.

One reader wrote, "Before asking such a question we need to know and understand what consciousness is and how it emerges in 'constructed' containers like ourselves. Is it a quantum phenomenon and how then does the process create consciousness? Meta-cognition. How does a system or an event know that it knows that it knows it knows? We really don't know how self-awareness arises, and tests show that "other animals have self awareness or meta-cognition," they noted. "There are theories about consciousness but I doubt anyone on Earth knows 100%."

Not surprisingly, only 10% of voters picked the whimsical answer of "No, because robot overlords will end the world before we even get that far." While the robot overlords may have to compete with AI to overthrow humanity, one reader commented that in the future, "We will be assimilated. Maybe that is how Transformers started?"

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ In the search for bees, Mozambique honey hunters and birds share a language with distinct, regional dialects ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/in-the-search-for-bees-mozambique-honey-hunters-and-birds-share-a-language-with-distinct-regional-dialects + <![CDATA[ Microscopic fragments of ancient alien tech may litter the moon — and scientists have a plan to find them ]]> + Tiny fragments of ancient alien tech may be strewn across the surface of the moon, and it may be relatively easy to find these microscopic relics, scientists propose in a new study.

The theoretical study does not claim to have found any evidence of advanced alien civilizations; rather, it offers a new way to search for clues of their existence.

Unlike Earth, the moon has no functional atmosphere or magnetic field, so it is completely exposed to the vacuum of space. As a result, it is constantly bombarded by meteorites, as well as hit by a steady stream of microscopic particles from the rest of the solar system and beyond. Because the moon has no water or tectonic movements, this microscopic matter accumulates and remains on the surface, completely undisturbed.

In the new paper, uploaded June 23 to the preprint server arXiv, the researchers argue that some of this dust originates from star systems beyond our own and, therefore, may contain evidence of long-lost alien civilizations. They also propose a new experiment that could potentially find these microscopic fragments within samples collected over the next decade or more. (The study has not been published yet, but it has been submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology.)

"The moon has been quietly accumulating material from space for billions of years, much of it likely billions of years older than the moon itself," study first author Lewis Pinault, a planetary scientist at University College London and an affiliate of the SETI Institute, said in a statement. "We're asking whether that ancient collection might contain microscopic traces of technologies that existed long before humans ever looked up at the sky."

Photo of the moon with the crescent Earth in the background

Unlike Earth, the moon lacks a functional atmosphere or magnetic field, meaning that its surface is exposed to the vacuum of space. This allows cosmic dust and other tiny particles to embed themselves within the lunar regolith. (Image credit: NASA)

Tiny technosignatures

Until now, the search for evidence of advanced alien civilizations, known as technosignatures, has focused mainly on radio signals that could be emitted from inhabited exoplanets or hypothetical megastructures, such as Dyson spheres. However, these signals would originate only from active civilizations, not those that died out long before we could spot them.

The authors of the new study argue that when a civilization dies, traces of its technology could survive and end up in space, either via the deterioration of megastructures and other smaller spacecraft or via powerful asteroid strikes on once-inhabited exoplanets. Once in space, tiny specks of metal or other artificial materials could be ejected from star systems by powerful gusts of stellar wind and eventually drift toward us.

Using computer models, the team predicted that pieces of tech up to 3 micrometers across (three-millionths of a meter, or about 3% the width of a human hair) could escape their star systems and travel across interstellar space for up to 1 billion years. Then, they estimated how much of this material could be reaching the solar system and how likely it would be to end up on the moon. (We already know that interstellar dust can penetrate the inner solar system because scientists found some within samples collected from the surface of Bennu, an asteroid that orbits between Earth and Mars and was visited by NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe in 2020.)

GIF showing simulation of moon passing through ions being blown of Earth by the solar wind

The moon is constantly being bombarded by tiny particles, some of which come from outside the solar system. (Image credit: University of Rochester illustration / Shubhonkar Paramanick)

To date, no lunar samples have contained any technosignatures. However, the scientists who studied them were likely not looking for such particulates, and the samples were probably too small to yield meaningful results, the study authors argue.

The researchers believe that a sample of lunar regolith with a volume of 35 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) could be enough to find at least one technological fragment. The team also proposed ways of combing through the material using microscopy, industrial materials analysis and AI-assisted imaging.

However, if such a sample does not yield any results, this would not necessarily disprove the researchers' hypothesis and may instead mean their models are off and a greater sample size would be required, the team wrote.

"Eminently reasonable"

A photo of the Artemis II rocket launching from Florida

Future missions in NASA's Artemis II program could bring back more samples of lunar regolith from the moon for future analysis. This photo shows the Artemis II mission lifting off April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Several upcoming space missions will collect fresh samples from the lunar surface, including China's recently delayed Chang'e-7 mission and future missions in NASA's Artemis program. These samples could potentially hold technosignatures, although the volume of regolith collected will be far less than what the researchers are proposing.

RELATED STORIES

Therefore, we may have to wait until humans establish a permanent moon base before astronauts can collect enough material to be analyzed properly. This may not be that far off, as both the U.S. and China are planning to construct lunar bases within the next decade. Researchers also think the samples could be analyzed on the moon rather than on Earth.

As a result, the SETI Institute, which leads the international hunt for technosignatures, views the new idea as very promising.

"The concept of searching the lunar regolith for microscopic technosignatures is at once extraordinarily original and eminently reasonable," Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute, who was not involved in the new study, said in the statement. "This is a novel addition to the search methodologies applied to seeking evidence of technology as a proxy for life and intelligence beyond our solar system and we are excited at the prospect of bringing this to fruition."

Extraterrestrials quiz: Are you an alien expert, or has your brain been abducted?

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/microscopic-fragments-of-ancient-alien-tech-may-litter-the-moon-and-scientists-have-a-plan-to-find-them - + - a3D5UVpSKxoFSKWzTegy8W - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:57:45 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 23:21:47 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - - <![CDATA[ LaView Galaxy Projector review ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/technology/laview-galaxy-projector-review - - - - sqDQsynmTXhnjr4kiwSFt9 - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:59:28 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - <![CDATA[ Physicists push thousands of atoms to a 'Schrödinger's cat' state — bringing the quantum world closer to reality than ever before ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/quantum-physics/physicists-push-thousands-of-atoms-to-a-schrodingers-cat-state-bringing-the-quantum-world-closer-to-reality-than-ever-before - - - - XAjYuGFVtftbn2KtBzHBxW - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:09:43 +0000 - - - - - - + KoNRGsd7LW6dADmCRo2dM6 + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:29:59 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

Tiny fragments of ancient alien tech may be strewn across the surface of the moon, and it may be relatively easy to find these microscopic relics, scientists propose in a new study.

The theoretical study does not claim to have found any evidence of advanced alien civilizations; rather, it offers a new way to search for clues of their existence.

Unlike Earth, the moon has no functional atmosphere or magnetic field, so it is completely exposed to the vacuum of space. As a result, it is constantly bombarded by meteorites, as well as hit by a steady stream of microscopic particles from the rest of the solar system and beyond. Because the moon has no water or tectonic movements, this microscopic matter accumulates and remains on the surface, completely undisturbed.

In the new paper, uploaded June 23 to the preprint server arXiv, the researchers argue that some of this dust originates from star systems beyond our own and, therefore, may contain evidence of long-lost alien civilizations. They also propose a new experiment that could potentially find these microscopic fragments within samples collected over the next decade or more. (The study has not been published yet, but it has been submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology.)

"The moon has been quietly accumulating material from space for billions of years, much of it likely billions of years older than the moon itself," study first author Lewis Pinault, a planetary scientist at University College London and an affiliate of the SETI Institute, said in a statement. "We're asking whether that ancient collection might contain microscopic traces of technologies that existed long before humans ever looked up at the sky."

Photo of the moon with the crescent Earth in the background

Unlike Earth, the moon lacks a functional atmosphere or magnetic field, meaning that its surface is exposed to the vacuum of space. This allows cosmic dust and other tiny particles to embed themselves within the lunar regolith. (Image credit: NASA)

Tiny technosignatures

Until now, the search for evidence of advanced alien civilizations, known as technosignatures, has focused mainly on radio signals that could be emitted from inhabited exoplanets or hypothetical megastructures, such as Dyson spheres. However, these signals would originate only from active civilizations, not those that died out long before we could spot them.

The authors of the new study argue that when a civilization dies, traces of its technology could survive and end up in space, either via the deterioration of megastructures and other smaller spacecraft or via powerful asteroid strikes on once-inhabited exoplanets. Once in space, tiny specks of metal or other artificial materials could be ejected from star systems by powerful gusts of stellar wind and eventually drift toward us.

Using computer models, the team predicted that pieces of tech up to 3 micrometers across (three-millionths of a meter, or about 3% the width of a human hair) could escape their star systems and travel across interstellar space for up to 1 billion years. Then, they estimated how much of this material could be reaching the solar system and how likely it would be to end up on the moon. (We already know that interstellar dust can penetrate the inner solar system because scientists found some within samples collected from the surface of Bennu, an asteroid that orbits between Earth and Mars and was visited by NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe in 2020.)

GIF showing simulation of moon passing through ions being blown of Earth by the solar wind

The moon is constantly being bombarded by tiny particles, some of which come from outside the solar system. (Image credit: University of Rochester illustration / Shubhonkar Paramanick)

To date, no lunar samples have contained any technosignatures. However, the scientists who studied them were likely not looking for such particulates, and the samples were probably too small to yield meaningful results, the study authors argue.

The researchers believe that a sample of lunar regolith with a volume of 35 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) could be enough to find at least one technological fragment. The team also proposed ways of combing through the material using microscopy, industrial materials analysis and AI-assisted imaging.

However, if such a sample does not yield any results, this would not necessarily disprove the researchers' hypothesis and may instead mean their models are off and a greater sample size would be required, the team wrote.

"Eminently reasonable"

A photo of the Artemis II rocket launching from Florida

Future missions in NASA's Artemis II program could bring back more samples of lunar regolith from the moon for future analysis. This photo shows the Artemis II mission lifting off April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Several upcoming space missions will collect fresh samples from the lunar surface, including China's recently delayed Chang'e-7 mission and future missions in NASA's Artemis program. These samples could potentially hold technosignatures, although the volume of regolith collected will be far less than what the researchers are proposing.

RELATED STORIES

Therefore, we may have to wait until humans establish a permanent moon base before astronauts can collect enough material to be analyzed properly. This may not be that far off, as both the U.S. and China are planning to construct lunar bases within the next decade. Researchers also think the samples could be analyzed on the moon rather than on Earth.

As a result, the SETI Institute, which leads the international hunt for technosignatures, views the new idea as very promising.

"The concept of searching the lunar regolith for microscopic technosignatures is at once extraordinarily original and eminently reasonable," Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute, who was not involved in the new study, said in the statement. "This is a novel addition to the search methodologies applied to seeking evidence of technology as a proxy for life and intelligence beyond our solar system and we are excited at the prospect of bringing this to fruition."

Extraterrestrials quiz: Are you an alien expert, or has your brain been abducted?

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Trippy 'biomass' snap reveals first detailed look at our planet's carbon stores — Earth from space ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/trippy-biomass-snap-reveals-first-detailed-look-at-our-planets-carbon-stores-earth-from-space + <![CDATA[ Swarovski CL Companion compact binocular review ]]> + The CL Companion is Swarovski's dedicated compact binocular, originally introduced 15 years ago, but has now been redesigned in 2026 to appeal to a wider, younger audience. RSPB research found an increase of around 1,000% in birdwatching among Gen Z in the UK since 2018, with a similar boom now happening in the US.

The CL Companion sits between the pocket-size CL Pocket and full-size EL and NL ranges, making it the perfect mid-range model that combines portability with excellent optical prowess.

The Companion is a grab-and-go, "take it anywhere and everywhere" binocular that is perfect for many different activities, whether that's spotting birds, scoping out your hiking trail or sweeping across the starry sky at night.

We spent a week with both the 8x30 and 10x30 CL Companions to test them out, with the former being ideal for tracking movement with a wider field of view, while the latter brings you closer to the details.

Swarovski CL Companion: Design

Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
  • Simple, fuss-free design
  • Rubber grip ensures a secure hold
  • Choice of three earth-tone colors

The biggest change in comparison to the old-style CL Companion is in the design. The original version was more of a traditional binocular aesthetic, but this updated design breathes life into the range with three new earth-toned colorways: mountain green, desert orange and safari brown. While some users have said they look somewhat toyish (or just downright ugly), when you handle them in person, they are much more sleek and stylish than the product images would have you believe.

Both the 8x30 and 10x30 weigh just 1.21 pounds (550 grams), so you can easily wear them around your neck all day without even knowing they're there. They're compact enough to put in a large jacket pocket, or you can just wear the included carry bag.

Key specifications

Magnification: 8x / 10x
Objective lens diameter: 30mm
Weight: 1.21 pounds (550 g)
Exit pupil: 3.8mm / 3mm
Field of view: 8-degrees / 6.6 degrees
Close focusing distance: 9.8 feet (3 m)

The central focus wheel has just the right amount of slip to make it easy to change focus, but is not so loose that you don't have enough control over it. The diopter is located on the front of the focus wheel, which felt a little off at first, but once we set it, there was no danger of accidentally changing it.

They also have generous eye relief, which is great news for users who wear glasses. The eye relief is 19mm on the 8x30 and 18mm on the 10x30. We used them on a bright, sunny day during a heatwave and were easily able to observe while wearing sunglasses with no issues at all.

Swarovski CL Companion: Performance

woman using the Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 by a river
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
woman using the Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 by a river
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
  • Sharp optics throughout the image circle
  • Minimal defects
  • Excellent for daytime birding

Out in the field, the CL Companions proved to be particularly well suited to daytime birding — although with 90% light transmission, they'll still hold their own at dawn or dusk. Both the 8x30 and 10x30 had a clear, sharp image, with plenty of detail across the image circle. The 8x30 felt particularly easy to use when trying to pick up birds quickly, while the 10x30's extra magnification was great for getting a closer look at more distant subjects.

The color reproduction was natural, and the views had good contrast without looking over-processed. Fine details on feathers were easy to pick out, even on smaller birds. There was a tiny sliver of color fringing towards the edges in high-contrast situations, but it didn't spoil the view whatsoever, and you'd only notice it if you were actively looking for it (which we were). Every time we have used a pair of Swarovski binoculars, there's a three-dimensional viewing experience and depth to the image that you just don't get with cheaper brands.

Both models performed well in the bright daylight conditions we were using them in, both in terms of optical clarity and comfort when using them for longer periods. Their small size and light weight meant we could comfortably track birds in flight without having to take breaks, which is often a dealbreaker when it comes to choosing a pair of birding binoculars.

Swarovski CL Companion: Functionality

Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 and bag on a rock
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 and bag on a rock
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
  • Wide field of view for birding
  • Waterproof down to 13 ft/4 m
  • 3m close focusing distance

The wide field of view is one of the more useful features for birding. The 8x30 has a 549 ft (140m) FOV, while the 10x30 has 377 ft (115m) — both of which are wider than the original generation of CL Companion. Both made it easy to find birds when scanning trees and bushes, and there was enough space around the subject to follow them easily after they took flight.

The close focusing distance of 9.8 feet (3m) was also handy when birds came closer, and enables you to observe insects like bees and butterflies without spooking them by getting too close. And with the smooth focus wheel, it was easy to change focus between the two distances.

Both models are waterproof down to 13 feet (4 m), which is likely more protection than most people will need, but it is reassuring when using them outdoors in the rain, or if you were to accidentally drop them in a puddle.

Should you buy the Swarovski CL Companion?

On paper, they tick all the boxes. The optics are excellent, and they're lightweight and easy to carry. But with Swarovski being very upfront about the fact that it’s going after a younger audience with these CL Companions, we have to wonder what young person would have a spare $1,500 to spend on a pair of binoculars? It's not a small investment, so you'd need to be a dedicated observer to spend that kind of money.

That said, they're much more than your typical compact binoculars. They're a genuinely impressive binocular with stunning optics built into a small and compact package. Typically you need to compromise on one or the other, but the CL Companion gives you the best of both worlds.

If this product isn't for you

Swarovski NL Pure 8x42 on a white backgroundSomething more premium

Swarovski NL Pure 8x42

Dedicated birders who want a more premium option will want to look at the Swarovski NL Pure range. They're one of the best binoculars we've ever used, and you'd never have to buy another pair again. We tested the 8x32, but if you like to observe at dawn or dusk, the 8x42 would be ideal.

Read our full Swarovski NL Pure 8x32 review

Product photo of the Hawke Endurance ED 8x25Something more compact

Hawke Endurance ED 8x25

The Hawke Endurance ED 8x25 are tiny, pocket-sized compact binoculars with genuinely impressive optics. Our optics writer loved testing them so much she went out and bought herself a pair.

Read our full Hawke Endurance ED 8x25 review

Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80 on a white backgroundSomething better for stargazing

Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80

Dedicated stargazing needs a bigger objective lens diameter — we love the Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80, although you'll need to mount them on a tripod.

Read our full Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80 review

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/products/optics/swarovski-cl-companion-compact-binocular-review - + - hGxDCh4z8ZZ2QPwbgr6FKa - - Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:00:00 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:09:44 +0000 - - - - - + 8GTgHfa7WQyyVTyVEGPB48 + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The CL Companion is Swarovski's dedicated compact binocular, originally introduced 15 years ago, but has now been redesigned in 2026 to appeal to a wider, younger audience. RSPB research found an increase of around 1,000% in birdwatching among Gen Z in the UK since 2018, with a similar boom now happening in the US.

The CL Companion sits between the pocket-size CL Pocket and full-size EL and NL ranges, making it the perfect mid-range model that combines portability with excellent optical prowess.

The Companion is a grab-and-go, "take it anywhere and everywhere" binocular that is perfect for many different activities, whether that's spotting birds, scoping out your hiking trail or sweeping across the starry sky at night.

We spent a week with both the 8x30 and 10x30 CL Companions to test them out, with the former being ideal for tracking movement with a wider field of view, while the latter brings you closer to the details.

Swarovski CL Companion: Design

Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 in the hand
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
  • Simple, fuss-free design
  • Rubber grip ensures a secure hold
  • Choice of three earth-tone colors

The biggest change in comparison to the old-style CL Companion is in the design. The original version was more of a traditional binocular aesthetic, but this updated design breathes life into the range with three new earth-toned colorways: mountain green, desert orange and safari brown. While some users have said they look somewhat toyish (or just downright ugly), when you handle them in person, they are much more sleek and stylish than the product images would have you believe.

Both the 8x30 and 10x30 weigh just 1.21 pounds (550 grams), so you can easily wear them around your neck all day without even knowing they're there. They're compact enough to put in a large jacket pocket, or you can just wear the included carry bag.

Key specifications

Magnification: 8x / 10x
Objective lens diameter: 30mm
Weight: 1.21 pounds (550 g)
Exit pupil: 3.8mm / 3mm
Field of view: 8-degrees / 6.6 degrees
Close focusing distance: 9.8 feet (3 m)

The central focus wheel has just the right amount of slip to make it easy to change focus, but is not so loose that you don't have enough control over it. The diopter is located on the front of the focus wheel, which felt a little off at first, but once we set it, there was no danger of accidentally changing it.

They also have generous eye relief, which is great news for users who wear glasses. The eye relief is 19mm on the 8x30 and 18mm on the 10x30. We used them on a bright, sunny day during a heatwave and were easily able to observe while wearing sunglasses with no issues at all.

Swarovski CL Companion: Performance

woman using the Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 by a river
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
woman using the Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 by a river
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
  • Sharp optics throughout the image circle
  • Minimal defects
  • Excellent for daytime birding

Out in the field, the CL Companions proved to be particularly well suited to daytime birding — although with 90% light transmission, they'll still hold their own at dawn or dusk. Both the 8x30 and 10x30 had a clear, sharp image, with plenty of detail across the image circle. The 8x30 felt particularly easy to use when trying to pick up birds quickly, while the 10x30's extra magnification was great for getting a closer look at more distant subjects.

The color reproduction was natural, and the views had good contrast without looking over-processed. Fine details on feathers were easy to pick out, even on smaller birds. There was a tiny sliver of color fringing towards the edges in high-contrast situations, but it didn't spoil the view whatsoever, and you'd only notice it if you were actively looking for it (which we were). Every time we have used a pair of Swarovski binoculars, there's a three-dimensional viewing experience and depth to the image that you just don't get with cheaper brands.

Both models performed well in the bright daylight conditions we were using them in, both in terms of optical clarity and comfort when using them for longer periods. Their small size and light weight meant we could comfortably track birds in flight without having to take breaks, which is often a dealbreaker when it comes to choosing a pair of birding binoculars.

Swarovski CL Companion: Functionality

Swarovski CL Companion 10x30 and bag on a rock
Swarovski CL Companion 10x30Kimberley Lane
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30 and bag on a rock
Swarovski CL Companion 8x30Kimberley Lane
  • Wide field of view for birding
  • Waterproof down to 13 ft/4 m
  • 3m close focusing distance

The wide field of view is one of the more useful features for birding. The 8x30 has a 549 ft (140m) FOV, while the 10x30 has 377 ft (115m) — both of which are wider than the original generation of CL Companion. Both made it easy to find birds when scanning trees and bushes, and there was enough space around the subject to follow them easily after they took flight.

The close focusing distance of 9.8 feet (3m) was also handy when birds came closer, and enables you to observe insects like bees and butterflies without spooking them by getting too close. And with the smooth focus wheel, it was easy to change focus between the two distances.

Both models are waterproof down to 13 feet (4 m), which is likely more protection than most people will need, but it is reassuring when using them outdoors in the rain, or if you were to accidentally drop them in a puddle.

Should you buy the Swarovski CL Companion?

On paper, they tick all the boxes. The optics are excellent, and they're lightweight and easy to carry. But with Swarovski being very upfront about the fact that it’s going after a younger audience with these CL Companions, we have to wonder what young person would have a spare $1,500 to spend on a pair of binoculars? It's not a small investment, so you'd need to be a dedicated observer to spend that kind of money.

That said, they're much more than your typical compact binoculars. They're a genuinely impressive binocular with stunning optics built into a small and compact package. Typically you need to compromise on one or the other, but the CL Companion gives you the best of both worlds.

If this product isn't for you

Swarovski NL Pure 8x42 on a white backgroundSomething more premium

Swarovski NL Pure 8x42

Dedicated birders who want a more premium option will want to look at the Swarovski NL Pure range. They're one of the best binoculars we've ever used, and you'd never have to buy another pair again. We tested the 8x32, but if you like to observe at dawn or dusk, the 8x42 would be ideal.

Read our full Swarovski NL Pure 8x32 review

Product photo of the Hawke Endurance ED 8x25Something more compact

Hawke Endurance ED 8x25

The Hawke Endurance ED 8x25 are tiny, pocket-sized compact binoculars with genuinely impressive optics. Our optics writer loved testing them so much she went out and bought herself a pair.

Read our full Hawke Endurance ED 8x25 review

Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80 on a white backgroundSomething better for stargazing

Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80

Dedicated stargazing needs a bigger objective lens diameter — we love the Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80, although you'll need to mount them on a tripod.

Read our full Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80 review

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Preserved hair reveals just how bad lead exposure was in the 20th century ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/health/preserved-hair-reveals-just-how-bad-lead-exposure-was-in-the-20th-century + <![CDATA[ Brain shrinkage tied to aging 'pauses' as a woman nears menopause, study finds ]]> + The brain undergoes dramatic changes during puberty and pregnancy, but during menopause, the organ's structure remains remarkably stable, a new study suggests.

The research, published Sept. 8 in the journal Nature Communications, examined the brain's gray matter, which mostly includes the wrinkled outer surface of the organ, called the cerebral cortex. Past studies have found that the volume of gray matter shrinks markedly during puberty and pregnancy, likely reflecting a fine-tuning of neural circuits during those periods.

There's also a gradual decline in gray matter during adulthood that's seen as a normal part of aging, said study co-author Sophie van't Hof, a doctoral student in psychiatry at Amsterdam University Medical Center. However, during the transition leading up to menopause, that gradual loss of gray matter levels off temporarily, the study found.

"This study provides the first direct longitudinal comparison of brain structural changes across all three major female hormonal transitions," said Magdalena Martínez-García, scientific director of maternal health for the Ann S. Bowers Women's Brain Health Initiative, a brain imaging consortium headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"I really appreciate the effort that went into finding and curating such an impressive longitudinal dataset of the female brain," Martínez-García, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.

Declines in puberty and pregnancy

For their analysis, the researchers gathered data from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database that contains information from 500,000 U.K.-based adults. That data includes MRI scans of people's brains, which the team used to study brain changes in menopause.

To look at puberty and pregnancy, the researchers pulled from several brain-scan datasets that had been compiled by Leiden University in the Netherlands.

In all, the study included data from 1,095 brains across the three life stages. They analyzed each participant's brain at two different time points, examining how each person's brain changed over time and how it compared to others' brains.

The youngest cohort included participants who hadn't started menstruating yet, as well as those who'd recently started and those who'd already had periods for an average of 19 months. The pregnancy cohort included 40 who'd had their first pregnancy during the study and 30 who'd had second pregnancies, as well as 40 women who'd never been pregnant, as a point of comparison.

As in previous studies, the researchers observed that both the girls entering puberty and the pregnant women lost gray matter. But scientists don't necessarily see these declines in gray matter at puberty and pregnancy as negative.

It’s a hypothesis, but "we actually see it as something positive," van't Hof said. "We see it as neural fine-tuning."

A woman lays inside an MRI machine

The study included brain scans from over 1,000 girls and women. (Image credit: Luis Alvarez via Getty Images)

During puberty, that gray-matter loss is thought to be a normal part of the brain's development into adulthood. Its function in pregnancy is not well understood, van't Hof noted, but the evidence to date doesn't suggest that it contributes to "mommy brain" — the brain fog and forgetfulness some women can experience postpartum.

"I'm not saying that there's no neurobiological basis for this mommy brain, but up until now, we haven't found it," van't Hof said. "But what's really important is that gray matter decline is not equal to cognitive complaints."

Stability in menopause

The analysis included 120 women who entered menopause during the study. At the first time point, these women had not gone a full year without a period, but by the second time point about 3.5 years later, they had. Menopause is defined as the point at which a full year has elapsed since a person's final period.

The researchers compared these women to two other groups: about 50 women (average age 51) who had not had their last period yet and over 670 women (average age 55.5) who had already had their last period.

During late perimenopause — the final stages of the transition to menopause — the brain's gradual decline in gray matter paused, van't Hof said. Then, in postmenopausal women, that gradual decline of gray matter resumed. The exact timing of that pause differed for each woman, but it occurred consistently across the group, van't Hof noted.

The most striking finding was the lessening of the "ongoing age-related decline in brain volume during the transition into and out of menopause, compared with the more stable premenopausal and postmenopausal groups," Martínez-García said. This is an "interesting finding that adds to our understanding of how dynamic the female brain can be across the lifespan."

Related stories

Factors such as whether participants had taken hormone replacement therapy for menopause and the number of children they had given birth to did not have a measurable impact on the results, the study authors noted.

In general, complaints of brain fog are widespread just before, during and after menopause, van't Hof said. This could be attributed to declining hormone levels and sleep disruptions.

"We have no clue if there's a neurological basis [for that brain fog], because, again, this is the first study to look at it," she said, adding that more studies are still needed to learn more.

"As with any study, there are some limitations to consider, but overall, I think the methods and conclusions are well supported by the data available," Martínez-García said. Both Martiniz-Garcia and van’t Hof said that they hope other researchers build on these findings to deepen scientists’ understanding of female neurobiology at every stage of life.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

See how much you know about the most complex organ in the human body with our brain quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/brain-shrinkage-tied-to-aging-pauses-as-a-woman-nears-menopause-study-finds - + - nvPbJdYmD2bezmgbmawNJ3 - - Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:11:37 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:09:44 +0000 - - - - - + chqUtaHrZTL3z8LNQ8HihL + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The brain undergoes dramatic changes during puberty and pregnancy, but during menopause, the organ's structure remains remarkably stable, a new study suggests.

The research, published Sept. 8 in the journal Nature Communications, examined the brain's gray matter, which mostly includes the wrinkled outer surface of the organ, called the cerebral cortex. Past studies have found that the volume of gray matter shrinks markedly during puberty and pregnancy, likely reflecting a fine-tuning of neural circuits during those periods.

There's also a gradual decline in gray matter during adulthood that's seen as a normal part of aging, said study co-author Sophie van't Hof, a doctoral student in psychiatry at Amsterdam University Medical Center. However, during the transition leading up to menopause, that gradual loss of gray matter levels off temporarily, the study found.

"This study provides the first direct longitudinal comparison of brain structural changes across all three major female hormonal transitions," said Magdalena Martínez-García, scientific director of maternal health for the Ann S. Bowers Women's Brain Health Initiative, a brain imaging consortium headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"I really appreciate the effort that went into finding and curating such an impressive longitudinal dataset of the female brain," Martínez-García, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.

Declines in puberty and pregnancy

For their analysis, the researchers gathered data from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database that contains information from 500,000 U.K.-based adults. That data includes MRI scans of people's brains, which the team used to study brain changes in menopause.

To look at puberty and pregnancy, the researchers pulled from several brain-scan datasets that had been compiled by Leiden University in the Netherlands.

In all, the study included data from 1,095 brains across the three life stages. They analyzed each participant's brain at two different time points, examining how each person's brain changed over time and how it compared to others' brains.

The youngest cohort included participants who hadn't started menstruating yet, as well as those who'd recently started and those who'd already had periods for an average of 19 months. The pregnancy cohort included 40 who'd had their first pregnancy during the study and 30 who'd had second pregnancies, as well as 40 women who'd never been pregnant, as a point of comparison.

As in previous studies, the researchers observed that both the girls entering puberty and the pregnant women lost gray matter. But scientists don't necessarily see these declines in gray matter at puberty and pregnancy as negative.

It’s a hypothesis, but "we actually see it as something positive," van't Hof said. "We see it as neural fine-tuning."

A woman lays inside an MRI machine

The study included brain scans from over 1,000 girls and women. (Image credit: Luis Alvarez via Getty Images)

During puberty, that gray-matter loss is thought to be a normal part of the brain's development into adulthood. Its function in pregnancy is not well understood, van't Hof noted, but the evidence to date doesn't suggest that it contributes to "mommy brain" — the brain fog and forgetfulness some women can experience postpartum.

"I'm not saying that there's no neurobiological basis for this mommy brain, but up until now, we haven't found it," van't Hof said. "But what's really important is that gray matter decline is not equal to cognitive complaints."

Stability in menopause

The analysis included 120 women who entered menopause during the study. At the first time point, these women had not gone a full year without a period, but by the second time point about 3.5 years later, they had. Menopause is defined as the point at which a full year has elapsed since a person's final period.

The researchers compared these women to two other groups: about 50 women (average age 51) who had not had their last period yet and over 670 women (average age 55.5) who had already had their last period.

During late perimenopause — the final stages of the transition to menopause — the brain's gradual decline in gray matter paused, van't Hof said. Then, in postmenopausal women, that gradual decline of gray matter resumed. The exact timing of that pause differed for each woman, but it occurred consistently across the group, van't Hof noted.

The most striking finding was the lessening of the "ongoing age-related decline in brain volume during the transition into and out of menopause, compared with the more stable premenopausal and postmenopausal groups," Martínez-García said. This is an "interesting finding that adds to our understanding of how dynamic the female brain can be across the lifespan."

Related stories

Factors such as whether participants had taken hormone replacement therapy for menopause and the number of children they had given birth to did not have a measurable impact on the results, the study authors noted.

In general, complaints of brain fog are widespread just before, during and after menopause, van't Hof said. This could be attributed to declining hormone levels and sleep disruptions.

"We have no clue if there's a neurological basis [for that brain fog], because, again, this is the first study to look at it," she said, adding that more studies are still needed to learn more.

"As with any study, there are some limitations to consider, but overall, I think the methods and conclusions are well supported by the data available," Martínez-García said. Both Martiniz-Garcia and van’t Hof said that they hope other researchers build on these findings to deepen scientists’ understanding of female neurobiology at every stage of life.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

See how much you know about the most complex organ in the human body with our brain quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Auroras likely as most active sunspot in years turns toward Earth ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/sunspot-launches-27-solar-flares-in-24-hours-including-strongest-outburst-in-years + <![CDATA[ Finland's largest Viking Age silver hoard discovered by metal detectorist — and it has thousands of coins and pieces of jewelry ]]> + The largest hoard of Viking Age silver ever found in Finland — which contains almost 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of coins and jewelry — has been unearthed by a metal detectorist about 95 miles (150 kilometers) north of Helsinki.

The hoard had been divided into two deposits and buried in birch-bark containers. Although the coins and jewelry likely date to between A.D. 1000 and 1050, it's unknown exactly when they were buried, Esko Tikkala, an archaeologist at the Lahti Historical Museum who excavated the hoard, told Live Science in an email.

The hoard has not yet been fully cleaned, separated and counted yet, but there are thousands of pieces, Tikkala said. "There are quite a lot of coins in this hoard," he said. "I have not had time to go through them."

Metal detectorist Kalle Lappinen found the two deposits Sept. 3 and immediately contacted the museum. Archaeologists inspected and properly excavated the finds the next day, according to a translated statement.

The coins were discovered in early September by metal detectorist Kalle Lappinen (right). (Image credit: Kalle Lappinen)

Tikkala described the hoard site as beside a rock outcrop in a forest near the town of Sysmä. Several other buried hoards had been found in the same region of Finland over the past 10 years, Tikkala said.

Although it's challenging to determine why specific hoards were buried, a recent study of more than 15,000 Roman-era (the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.) hoards found that they were hidden for multiple reasons, including for tax evasion, votive offerings, and safe storage in times of uncertainty.

Tikkala said the two deposits of the silver hoard were buried between two stones about 18 inches (45 centimeters) below ground and about 39 feet (12 meters) apart. There were no signs of any burials nearby, but the surrounding area had not been properly studied, he said.

Tikkala added that the coins came from areas that corresponded to present-day Germany, Sweden and Great Britain. There were also some dirhams —‬ silver coins made in the Islamic world. Dirhams previously found in Finland generally date to between about 800 and 1050, he said.

In addition to the silver coins from many places, the hoard contains items of silver jewelry and "hack silver" used for payments. (Image credit: Lahti Museum)

The hoard also contains several pieces of jewelry, including a silver bracelet, and "payment silver" in the form of hack silver (also called hacksilber) — pieces of silver that could be cut into smaller pieces for payments according to their weight.

The weight of the precious metal alone would make the hoard worth almost $10,000 today.

From the Viking Age, but not from Vikings

Although the hoard is from the Viking Age (traditionally, from the 793 attack on Lindisfarne until the 1066 defeat of a Viking army at Stamford Bridge in England), that doesn't mean it was buried by Vikings, Tikkala said.

"The term Viking Age does not imply that there were Vikings in Finland," he said. "We have no sources suggesting that Finland was 'Viking' in the same sense as regions of present-day Sweden, Norway, and Denmark."

Instead, Finnish historians and archaeologists had adopted the term to designate the period, he said. But the area now known as Finland was not culturally or politically part of Viking Scandinavia.

The hoard had been placed in two bark containers that were then buried several feet apart. (Image credit: Lahti Museum)

The next stage of the archaeological investigation will be to properly study the site where the two deposits were found, as well as their surroundings, Tikkala said; after that, specialists in Viking Age coins will try to identify the coins and prepare a detailed report.

Related stories

"There will definitely be scientific articles published on the hoard as a whole, as well as more detailed studies of the coins themselves," he said.

Until now, Finland's largest Viking Age hoard was found in 1895. Buried at Nousiainen, about 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Sysmä, it contained more than 1,700 silver coins but weighed only about half as much as the newfound hoard.

Other Nordic countries have also recently reported their largest Viking Age hoards. A cache of more than 4,700 coins was found in Norway this past spring, and a homeowner in Denmark unexpectedly discovered a hoard of more than 700 silver objects weighing more than 40 pounds (18.5 kg) in their backyard, also in the spring.

See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/vikings/finlands-largest-viking-age-silver-hoard-discovered-by-metal-detectorist-and-it-has-thousands-of-coins-and-pieces-of-jewelry - + - TxDqSRc5V9PJWtLYMJoyCi - - Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:03:19 +0000 Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:10:53 +0000 - - - - - - - + kimsJSUHKQiKUMJnufajRW + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:58:55 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

The largest hoard of Viking Age silver ever found in Finland — which contains almost 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of coins and jewelry — has been unearthed by a metal detectorist about 95 miles (150 kilometers) north of Helsinki.

The hoard had been divided into two deposits and buried in birch-bark containers. Although the coins and jewelry likely date to between A.D. 1000 and 1050, it's unknown exactly when they were buried, Esko Tikkala, an archaeologist at the Lahti Historical Museum who excavated the hoard, told Live Science in an email.

The hoard has not yet been fully cleaned, separated and counted yet, but there are thousands of pieces, Tikkala said. "There are quite a lot of coins in this hoard," he said. "I have not had time to go through them."

Metal detectorist Kalle Lappinen found the two deposits Sept. 3 and immediately contacted the museum. Archaeologists inspected and properly excavated the finds the next day, according to a translated statement.

The coins were discovered in early September by metal detectorist Kalle Lappinen (right). (Image credit: Kalle Lappinen)

Tikkala described the hoard site as beside a rock outcrop in a forest near the town of Sysmä. Several other buried hoards had been found in the same region of Finland over the past 10 years, Tikkala said.

Although it's challenging to determine why specific hoards were buried, a recent study of more than 15,000 Roman-era (the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.) hoards found that they were hidden for multiple reasons, including for tax evasion, votive offerings, and safe storage in times of uncertainty.

Tikkala said the two deposits of the silver hoard were buried between two stones about 18 inches (45 centimeters) below ground and about 39 feet (12 meters) apart. There were no signs of any burials nearby, but the surrounding area had not been properly studied, he said.

Tikkala added that the coins came from areas that corresponded to present-day Germany, Sweden and Great Britain. There were also some dirhams —‬ silver coins made in the Islamic world. Dirhams previously found in Finland generally date to between about 800 and 1050, he said.

In addition to the silver coins from many places, the hoard contains items of silver jewelry and "hack silver" used for payments. (Image credit: Lahti Museum)

The hoard also contains several pieces of jewelry, including a silver bracelet, and "payment silver" in the form of hack silver (also called hacksilber) — pieces of silver that could be cut into smaller pieces for payments according to their weight.

The weight of the precious metal alone would make the hoard worth almost $10,000 today.

From the Viking Age, but not from Vikings

Although the hoard is from the Viking Age (traditionally, from the 793 attack on Lindisfarne until the 1066 defeat of a Viking army at Stamford Bridge in England), that doesn't mean it was buried by Vikings, Tikkala said.

"The term Viking Age does not imply that there were Vikings in Finland," he said. "We have no sources suggesting that Finland was 'Viking' in the same sense as regions of present-day Sweden, Norway, and Denmark."

Instead, Finnish historians and archaeologists had adopted the term to designate the period, he said. But the area now known as Finland was not culturally or politically part of Viking Scandinavia.

The hoard had been placed in two bark containers that were then buried several feet apart. (Image credit: Lahti Museum)

The next stage of the archaeological investigation will be to properly study the site where the two deposits were found, as well as their surroundings, Tikkala said; after that, specialists in Viking Age coins will try to identify the coins and prepare a detailed report.

Related stories

"There will definitely be scientific articles published on the hoard as a whole, as well as more detailed studies of the coins themselves," he said.

Until now, Finland's largest Viking Age hoard was found in 1895. Buried at Nousiainen, about 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Sysmä, it contained more than 1,700 silver coins but weighed only about half as much as the newfound hoard.

Other Nordic countries have also recently reported their largest Viking Age hoards. A cache of more than 4,700 coins was found in Norway this past spring, and a homeowner in Denmark unexpectedly discovered a hoard of more than 700 silver objects weighing more than 40 pounds (18.5 kg) in their backyard, also in the spring.

See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ What is Moltbook? A social network for AI threatens a 'total purge' of humanity — but some experts say it's a hoax ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/what-is-moltbook-a-social-network-for-ai-threatens-a-total-purge-of-humanity-but-some-experts-say-its-a-hoax + <![CDATA[ 'Every time it gets excited — boom — it collapses': How dogs with narcolepsy helped scientists understand the disorder ]]> + Many people are familiar with melatonin, a hormone that helps ready the body for sleep. But there's another, lesser-known chemical in the brain, called orexin, that tips the scale in the other direction: waking the body up.

In 1999, two scientists independently uncovered the function of orexin and published papers about it. Dr. Masashi Yanagisawa, a molecular biologist and physician now at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, came across orexin while studying the interaction of receptors and chemicals in the brain. Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, now the director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy, homed in on orexin while studying narcoleptic dogs. (His Chihuahua, named Watson, has narcolepsy, and he previously had another dog with the condition, named Bear.)

This year, the pair of researchers won the coveted Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for this fundamental finding that helped reshape our understanding of sleep. Their work has since led to the development of drugs for insomnia and narcolepsy.

Yanagisawa told Live Science that, at the start of his research career, he didn't expect to end up studying sleep. Mignot, on the other hand, had an early interest in understanding narcolepsy so that better treatments for the neurological disorder could be developed. Live Science spoke with Mignot about the discovery of orexin and how the field might progress in the future.

Nicoletta Lanese: What initially drew you to studying narcolepsy?

Dr. Emmanuel Mignot: There were three things that attracted me to narcolepsy: Number one, it was a human problem. It was already known [at the time] that it was not super rare. I'm not saying it's super common, but 1 person per 3,000, 0.03% ‪—‬ it's reasonably common. And nobody cared about it. I would talk to neurologists and they'd say, "Oh, I've never seen one case in my entire life." So I would say, "Yes, of course; you miss them all." That was the state of the play at the time.

Number two, was what this was a quintessential sleep disorder [in which sleep itself is disrupted]. I thought that if we found the cause of this disease, we could potentially discover something totally new about sleep — a fantastic entry point to a mystery.

The third thing that made me ready to go there was that it was tractable. A lot of problems are not tractable.

NL: Why did you start working with the dogs with narcolepsy?

EM: I studied the pharmacological basis because I was trained in pharmacology, and as a psychiatrist, and I discovered how this drug modafinil [a stimulant-based narcolepsy treatment] was working. But quickly, I realized I'm not going to find the cause by doing pharmacology. I'm only going to explore what's known.

That's when I started to fall in love with genetics, even though I was not trained as a geneticist. I said, "We have to find this gene in the dogs." It looks like they have all the symptoms. It was a huge bet, and it took me 10 years because I was definitely … overoptimistic. But it was worth the price at the end.

After narcolepsy was described — the dog gene — suddenly narcolepsy became much more famous.

NL: And scientists already knew about narcolepsy in dogs at that time?

EM: The guy at Stanford that started the sleep program was called Dr. [William] Dement. He was a graduate student in Chicago in the 1950s, when [Eugene] Aserinsky and [Nathaniel] Kleitman discovered REM sleep. He had the foresight to understand that this was an important discovery.

[Later], he discovered that narcolepsy was really a disorder where people go into REM sleep and have this very abnormal dreaming. He came in 1970 to Stanford, and the first thing he did after his medical school was to start a clinic to see patients with narcolepsy. Around then, he spoke at an American Medical Association conference in San Francisco, and he discussed different sleep disorders, including narcolepsy. And then there was someone in the audience that said, "Oh my god; I have a dog with your disease. Every time it gets excited — boom — it collapses. And it sleeps all the time."

That dog had already been euthanized, but it still gave him the idea that these dogs have narcolepsy — maybe we should try to get some. So he went to a lot of veterinarians to talk to them about it, and they identified a whole series of dogs, including the first poodle, Monique, who had narcolepsy. And they started this little colony of dogs. Initially, they tried to breed them, but most cases of narcolepsy are actually not genetic. Then, in 1977, they got a whole litter of Dobermans, and then Labradors, that had some form that was genetic.

So when I arrived, it was in 1987. They already had the dog colony. I came to study the pharmacology, to try to find a better treatment for narcolepsy. But I did stand on the shoulders of giants.

NL: At that time, it's not like you had a complete dog genome. Did that make studying their genetics challenging?

EM: It was crazy. A couple of human genes had been isolated, and mouse genes, but it was a handful. We didn't even have the full genome map in humans. And meanwhile, dogs — no pun intended — were in no man's land. Very little was known.

It took me 10 years. I had times where some people didn't believe that the dogs had narcolepsy. There were a few depressing moments, but I was convinced that was the right thing to do.

Orexin (pictured) is a peptide in the brain that promotes wakefulness. (Image credit: theasis via Getty Images)

NL: When you ultimately found the receptor for orexin, did it surprise you? It strikes me as surprising that there would be a discrete "switch" in the brain that controls wakefulness.

EM: I was lucky. Honestly, I had no idea. I got enamored with genetics because what I love [about it] is you can find something without any hypothesis. You just search for it, and what you find tells you what it is. You have no prerequisite for knowing what you would find.

I could have found something much less significant. That was a dream, to find a GPCR [G-protein coupled receptor, a protein on the outside of cells]. Can you imagine? A drug target.

Then, it turned out to be immediately applicable to humans. That, too, was a lot of luck; let's be honest. I was just trying to find the cause of one thing and one step at a time; it could have been something very complicated. It turned out to be simple.

Was I surprised? No, because I was not expecting one or another.

NL: Do you recall what the reception was like when the initial finding was published?

EM: It had an immediate effect, for several reasons. For example, I was seeing a lot of patients with narcolepsy at the time, but they were all old folks that had had narcolepsy forever. A lot of people would tell me, "I think I had it from when I was born, because I don't remember." We were never seeing children.

But after narcolepsy was described — the dog gene — suddenly narcolepsy became much more famous. And what happened is that people started to pay attention to narcolepsy, and we started to see kids. In kids, the picture is so much different. They gain an enormous amount of weight; it's very abrupt. It's a little bit different than what you see in adults, where they have adapted to it.

That was, I think, a practical consequence of the discovery. It really put narcolepsy on the map.

The second thing that happened is, all the drug companies started to develop hypnotics [sleeping pills], trying to block the orexin. They developed hypnotics relatively quickly, and they are very effective. They are probably safer than benzos [benzodiazepines] and so forth.

NL: Is it considered safer because the orexin blockers better replicate natural sleep?

EM: We know that the orexin definitely drops during sleep, so blocking it is definitely a way to recapitulate that drop; that's true. It's an awake-promoting system, so if you remove something that makes you more awake, it's safer than inducing sleep by shutting down the brain.

NL: As you moved to studying narcolepsy in humans, you found evidence that there might be an autoimmune response involved; it's been suggested that such a response may be harming the cells that make orexin in the brain. Was there suspicion that the condition had an autoimmune element previously?

EM: It's not something I 100% discovered. In 1983, before I came to study narcolepsy, there was a guy in Japan who I met, called Yutaka Honda. [Editor's note: Honda's research linked narcolepsy to the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region of the genome, which helps regulate immune responses.]

The HLA is the way the immune system sees the world. That had just been discovered as very important for transplantation, because it's very polymorphic [takes on different forms] from one person to the next. They [Honda's group] found that all narcoleptics had a particular genetic variant, called HLA-DR2. This was a total surprise.

When I came, that was already known. But then people really looked and tried to see if the disease was autoimmune, but they couldn't find anything — no autoantibody, nothing. It was all negative.

I did a study with African Americans, and in African Americans, I found that this DR2 marker was not the best marker for narcolepsy. It was a gene just next to it that was called DQB1*06:02. [Editor's note: That HLA variant is now recognized as a strong risk factor for narcolepsy, particularly for narcolepsy type 1 (which involves a symptom called cataplexy).]

I'm very proud of that study because I think it's the first time that people used human diversity to actually map down a genetic factor more precisely, which now is used commonly. It's called transethnic mapping.

NL: New treatments that target orexin have just been approved. Do you see those therapies as an extension of your earlier findings?

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

EM: Of course. I was trained as a pharmacologist originally, so obviously, I do a lot of clinical trials. I see my patients totally transformed by this medication. It's just amazing. I'm so fortunate. How could you get a better reward than seeing your patients totally transformed by this medication?

It's going to have a lot of other applications [beyond narcolepsy]. Some people think it's going to be very helpful for ADHD; some people think it could be very helpful for depressed people with excessive sleepiness. We don't know, really; there's a lot of possibilities.

Another thing I'm excited about is that I have a few patients with [both] narcolepsy and schizophrenia. You cannot give them stimulants. If you give them modafinil or another dopamine stimulant [for narcolepsy], they have even more hallucinations. Often, they are sedated by their medication, and we are very poor at making people more motivated and active. These [orexin-activating] drugs seem to have effects beyond just waking people up. They seem to increase motivation.

You don't know until you try, but I'm sure it's going to have other applications.

This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity. It is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/sleep/how-dogs-with-narcolepsy-helped-to-unravel-a-misunderstood-disease - + Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy and co-winner of a coveted Lasker Award. ]]> - MYXezLDQESHKL7RWAnq2Jc - - Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:34:21 +0000 Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:38:08 +0000 - - - - - - + DgFvgHuykinD8vfS8HWReC + + Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:37:33 +0000 + + + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +

Many people are familiar with melatonin, a hormone that helps ready the body for sleep. But there's another, lesser-known chemical in the brain, called orexin, that tips the scale in the other direction: waking the body up.

In 1999, two scientists independently uncovered the function of orexin and published papers about it. Dr. Masashi Yanagisawa, a molecular biologist and physician now at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, came across orexin while studying the interaction of receptors and chemicals in the brain. Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, now the director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy, homed in on orexin while studying narcoleptic dogs. (His Chihuahua, named Watson, has narcolepsy, and he previously had another dog with the condition, named Bear.)

This year, the pair of researchers won the coveted Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for this fundamental finding that helped reshape our understanding of sleep. Their work has since led to the development of drugs for insomnia and narcolepsy.

Yanagisawa told Live Science that, at the start of his research career, he didn't expect to end up studying sleep. Mignot, on the other hand, had an early interest in understanding narcolepsy so that better treatments for the neurological disorder could be developed. Live Science spoke with Mignot about the discovery of orexin and how the field might progress in the future.

Nicoletta Lanese: What initially drew you to studying narcolepsy?

Dr. Emmanuel Mignot: There were three things that attracted me to narcolepsy: Number one, it was a human problem. It was already known [at the time] that it was not super rare. I'm not saying it's super common, but 1 person per 3,000, 0.03% ‪—‬ it's reasonably common. And nobody cared about it. I would talk to neurologists and they'd say, "Oh, I've never seen one case in my entire life." So I would say, "Yes, of course; you miss them all." That was the state of the play at the time.

Number two, was what this was a quintessential sleep disorder [in which sleep itself is disrupted]. I thought that if we found the cause of this disease, we could potentially discover something totally new about sleep — a fantastic entry point to a mystery.

The third thing that made me ready to go there was that it was tractable. A lot of problems are not tractable.

NL: Why did you start working with the dogs with narcolepsy?

EM: I studied the pharmacological basis because I was trained in pharmacology, and as a psychiatrist, and I discovered how this drug modafinil [a stimulant-based narcolepsy treatment] was working. But quickly, I realized I'm not going to find the cause by doing pharmacology. I'm only going to explore what's known.

That's when I started to fall in love with genetics, even though I was not trained as a geneticist. I said, "We have to find this gene in the dogs." It looks like they have all the symptoms. It was a huge bet, and it took me 10 years because I was definitely … overoptimistic. But it was worth the price at the end.

After narcolepsy was described — the dog gene — suddenly narcolepsy became much more famous.

NL: And scientists already knew about narcolepsy in dogs at that time?

EM: The guy at Stanford that started the sleep program was called Dr. [William] Dement. He was a graduate student in Chicago in the 1950s, when [Eugene] Aserinsky and [Nathaniel] Kleitman discovered REM sleep. He had the foresight to understand that this was an important discovery.

[Later], he discovered that narcolepsy was really a disorder where people go into REM sleep and have this very abnormal dreaming. He came in 1970 to Stanford, and the first thing he did after his medical school was to start a clinic to see patients with narcolepsy. Around then, he spoke at an American Medical Association conference in San Francisco, and he discussed different sleep disorders, including narcolepsy. And then there was someone in the audience that said, "Oh my god; I have a dog with your disease. Every time it gets excited — boom — it collapses. And it sleeps all the time."

That dog had already been euthanized, but it still gave him the idea that these dogs have narcolepsy — maybe we should try to get some. So he went to a lot of veterinarians to talk to them about it, and they identified a whole series of dogs, including the first poodle, Monique, who had narcolepsy. And they started this little colony of dogs. Initially, they tried to breed them, but most cases of narcolepsy are actually not genetic. Then, in 1977, they got a whole litter of Dobermans, and then Labradors, that had some form that was genetic.

So when I arrived, it was in 1987. They already had the dog colony. I came to study the pharmacology, to try to find a better treatment for narcolepsy. But I did stand on the shoulders of giants.

NL: At that time, it's not like you had a complete dog genome. Did that make studying their genetics challenging?

EM: It was crazy. A couple of human genes had been isolated, and mouse genes, but it was a handful. We didn't even have the full genome map in humans. And meanwhile, dogs — no pun intended — were in no man's land. Very little was known.

It took me 10 years. I had times where some people didn't believe that the dogs had narcolepsy. There were a few depressing moments, but I was convinced that was the right thing to do.

Orexin (pictured) is a peptide in the brain that promotes wakefulness. (Image credit: theasis via Getty Images)

NL: When you ultimately found the receptor for orexin, did it surprise you? It strikes me as surprising that there would be a discrete "switch" in the brain that controls wakefulness.

EM: I was lucky. Honestly, I had no idea. I got enamored with genetics because what I love [about it] is you can find something without any hypothesis. You just search for it, and what you find tells you what it is. You have no prerequisite for knowing what you would find.

I could have found something much less significant. That was a dream, to find a GPCR [G-protein coupled receptor, a protein on the outside of cells]. Can you imagine? A drug target.

Then, it turned out to be immediately applicable to humans. That, too, was a lot of luck; let's be honest. I was just trying to find the cause of one thing and one step at a time; it could have been something very complicated. It turned out to be simple.

Was I surprised? No, because I was not expecting one or another.

NL: Do you recall what the reception was like when the initial finding was published?

EM: It had an immediate effect, for several reasons. For example, I was seeing a lot of patients with narcolepsy at the time, but they were all old folks that had had narcolepsy forever. A lot of people would tell me, "I think I had it from when I was born, because I don't remember." We were never seeing children.

But after narcolepsy was described — the dog gene — suddenly narcolepsy became much more famous. And what happened is that people started to pay attention to narcolepsy, and we started to see kids. In kids, the picture is so much different. They gain an enormous amount of weight; it's very abrupt. It's a little bit different than what you see in adults, where they have adapted to it.

That was, I think, a practical consequence of the discovery. It really put narcolepsy on the map.

The second thing that happened is, all the drug companies started to develop hypnotics [sleeping pills], trying to block the orexin. They developed hypnotics relatively quickly, and they are very effective. They are probably safer than benzos [benzodiazepines] and so forth.

NL: Is it considered safer because the orexin blockers better replicate natural sleep?

EM: We know that the orexin definitely drops during sleep, so blocking it is definitely a way to recapitulate that drop; that's true. It's an awake-promoting system, so if you remove something that makes you more awake, it's safer than inducing sleep by shutting down the brain.

NL: As you moved to studying narcolepsy in humans, you found evidence that there might be an autoimmune response involved; it's been suggested that such a response may be harming the cells that make orexin in the brain. Was there suspicion that the condition had an autoimmune element previously?

EM: It's not something I 100% discovered. In 1983, before I came to study narcolepsy, there was a guy in Japan who I met, called Yutaka Honda. [Editor's note: Honda's research linked narcolepsy to the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region of the genome, which helps regulate immune responses.]

The HLA is the way the immune system sees the world. That had just been discovered as very important for transplantation, because it's very polymorphic [takes on different forms] from one person to the next. They [Honda's group] found that all narcoleptics had a particular genetic variant, called HLA-DR2. This was a total surprise.

When I came, that was already known. But then people really looked and tried to see if the disease was autoimmune, but they couldn't find anything — no autoantibody, nothing. It was all negative.

I did a study with African Americans, and in African Americans, I found that this DR2 marker was not the best marker for narcolepsy. It was a gene just next to it that was called DQB1*06:02. [Editor's note: That HLA variant is now recognized as a strong risk factor for narcolepsy, particularly for narcolepsy type 1 (which involves a symptom called cataplexy).]

I'm very proud of that study because I think it's the first time that people used human diversity to actually map down a genetic factor more precisely, which now is used commonly. It's called transethnic mapping.

NL: New treatments that target orexin have just been approved. Do you see those therapies as an extension of your earlier findings?

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

EM: Of course. I was trained as a pharmacologist originally, so obviously, I do a lot of clinical trials. I see my patients totally transformed by this medication. It's just amazing. I'm so fortunate. How could you get a better reward than seeing your patients totally transformed by this medication?

It's going to have a lot of other applications [beyond narcolepsy]. Some people think it's going to be very helpful for ADHD; some people think it could be very helpful for depressed people with excessive sleepiness. We don't know, really; there's a lot of possibilities.

Another thing I'm excited about is that I have a few patients with [both] narcolepsy and schizophrenia. You cannot give them stimulants. If you give them modafinil or another dopamine stimulant [for narcolepsy], they have even more hallucinations. Often, they are sedated by their medication, and we are very poor at making people more motivated and active. These [orexin-activating] drugs seem to have effects beyond just waking people up. They seem to increase motivation.

You don't know until you try, but I'm sure it's going to have other applications.

This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity. It is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Enormous 'mega-blob' under Hawaii is solid rock and iron, not gooey — and it may fuel a hotspot ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/enormous-mega-blob-under-hawaii-is-solid-rock-and-iron-not-gooey-and-it-may-fuel-a-hotspot + <![CDATA[ Infectious diseases will seed new ground as the planet warms — here's where they'll spread ]]> +
Burning Up

As the planet warms, our environment will be transformed, but so will our bodies. In this series, 'Burning up,' we investigate the health impacts of climate change, focusing on heat, air quality, food and infection risk. We also evaluate the promising solutions that could help us adapt to our warmer future.

To the untrained eye, Xiaoyu Shan's lab bench looked like a home gardening experiment gone bad: dishes filled with dirt — some that looked like mud pies and others that were bone-dry — and not a plant to be seen.

But those dishes held a warning. The dirt that Shan, a postdoctoral research associate in biology and biological engineering at Caltech, was studying contained soil microbes. And those soil microbes were exhibiting a concerning propensity: In dried-out soil, they were evolving to become more antibiotic resistant.

The study describing those findings, published in March, systematically showed that drought conditions could fuel the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Most of this resistance is driven by humans' misuse of antibiotics, which spurs bacteria to evolve genes that help them ward off the drugs. But the Caltech study raised a new worry: As many places face increased drought conditions, climate change itself could act as a selective pressure that could supercharge the evolution of these drug-resistant superbugs.

"We can expect to have more resistant bacteria being selected for in certain places around the globe," said Dianne Newman, a Caltech microbiologist and co-author of the study.

Increased antibiotic resistance is just one way that climate change is likely to put new populations at risk of multiple types of infections.

And this increased disease burden will coincide with climate change scrambling supply chains, eroding nutrition and stressing our health in other ways.

"No individual metric really does justice to the overall risk and health and well-being of these multiple stressors being exacerbated all at once and compounding each other," said Marina Romanello, a principal research fellow at the Institute of Global Health at University College London.

Warm-weather disease

In the small mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, which lies at an elevation of 7,740 feet (2,360 meters), May often brings snowstorms that can blanket the ground in white even as the sun starts to bake the plains at lower elevations. But on Memorial Day 2026, the forest floor was dry and ticks quested their way along blades of grass, seeking a blood meal.

A mild winter in most of the country means ticks — and the diseases they carry — are a rising concern. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that emergency department visits for tick bites were at their highest for that month since 2017. That trend isn't a one-off, according to the CDC; as temperatures rise, insects and arthropods can survive longer in the year and farther north.

Public health workers in Ontario do a survey for black-legged ticks. Lyme disease, which is carried by the ticks, is spreading in new areas as the climate warms. (Image credit: Bernard Weil via Getty Images)

As a result, vector-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease (spread by black-legged ticks in the Ixodes genus) and West Nile virus (spread by mosquitoes) will become more common in increasingly northerly locations. Already, alpha-gal syndrome, which is not an infection but is transmitted by the Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum) and causes an incurable allergy to red meat, is also seeing a dramatic rise as the species expands its range across the Northeast. Positive tests for antibodies to the alpha-gal molecule have increased by 100 times between 2013 and 2024.

Right now, almost half a million people are treated for Lyme disease each year, and the CDC records more than 8,000 cases of other tick-borne diseases annually across the country. It's not clear how this will change as the climate warms. One 2022 study found major increases in Lyme disease only at levels of warming of 6.3 to 9.9 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 to 5.5 degrees Celsius) by 2100, but that much warming that fast is now considered an implausible scenario. However, the researchers saw a huge amount of uncertainty in the numbers, given the number of variables that affect whether a spreading tick population will transmit more disease, such as how often people go outside or what steps they take to avoid tick bites. Tick-borne illnesses are likely also underreported, so even the true number of illnesses transmitted each year right now is unknown.

But ticks are responsible for spreading 90% of all vector-borne diseases in the U.S., so any trends in the suite of illnesses spread by ticks are likely to affect thousands to tens of thousands of people.

An even more ubiquitous bloodsucker, the mosquito, currently spreads only a few diseases in the U.S. The most common and most serious is West Nile virus, which mosquitoes catch from feeding on infected birds. As of Sept. 8, 504 cases of West Nile virus had been reported in the U.S. in 2026, with 363 of them affecting the central nervous system. And because fewer than 1% of West Nile cases progress to the central nervous system, those numbers likely represent a dramatic underreporting of milder cases, which can cause months of fatigue in some people, in addition to acute flu-like symptoms, such as fever, headache and body aches.

Mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile are expected to spread more quickly in warming temperatures. Heat helps mosquitoes stick around longer during the year, much like it does for ticks. It also speeds up the transmission and replication of the virus inside the mosquito, since the insects are cold-blooded and thus their metabolism is ruled by the weather.

"Except for places that are already really, really warm, we should expect that the replication rate of the virus inside the mosquito will speed up," said John Drake, director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia. "That shortens the generation time, and that means we expect there to be more transmission."

Even though mosquitos love water, climate-related drought could ironically nearly triple the number of human West Nile cases in the U.S. over the next 30 years from around 2,000 reported cases (according to CDC data) to between 5,000 and 6,000. That's likely because in drier conditions, more mosquitoes are infected, possibly because birds, the intermediate host of the virus, either congregate more closely with mosquitoes around water sources or breed less readily in drought, meaning the fraction of birds that carry the virus is higher than in more water-abundant times.

Except for places that are already really, really warm, we should expect that the replication rate of the virus inside the mosquito will speed up. That shortens the generation time, and that means we expect there to be more transmission.

John Drake, director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia

Mosquito-borne diseases long ago eradicated from the U.S. could also resurge with warming temperatures. The southeastern United States will become more prone to malaria and dengue fever transmission under all levels of warming; summer 2026 saw more than 40 locally-acquired cases of dengue fever in Florida. Public health surveillance and disease-control measures have largely stopped those transmission chains, but the likelihood is that society will have to pour more money into beating these diseases back again in future decades. For example, there are malaria vaccines approved for children, but currently, they are recommended only in areas where the illnesses are endemic. If malaria were commonly found in the southern U.S., millions of Americans might need vaccines, including susceptible adults.

"If we were to get endemic diseases like those in the U.S. again, it could become a huge burden and it could be quite costly," Drake said.

Disaster and disease

Flooding is another factor that's exacerbating vector-borne disease under climate change. As climate change worsens, extreme weather events will, too. Because warm air can hold more moisture, many areas will see increased episodes of heavy rainfall and hurricanes will become more intense.

"Flooding creates habitat for these mosquitoes," Drake said.

Disasters also spur the spread of other diseases that are usually quite rare in the U.S., such as leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that spreads from animals to humans via animal urine. Floodwaters may be contaminated by the bodies of drowned animals; in 2022, after Hurricane Fiora hit Puerto Rico, leptospirosis cases leapt by a factor of 3.6 to over 10 cases a week.

After Hurricane Matthew, emergency visits for gastrointestinal disease increased 11%. (Image credit: Raleigh News & Observer via Getty Images)

After Hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018, respectively, North Carolina saw an 11% increase in emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illnesses. Black and American Indian residents were the most affected, likely because discrimination over generations has disproportionately pushed Black Americans and Native Americans to less desirable, more flood-prone land, the researchers found.

Cycles of precipitation, drought and subsequent dust storms can spur the spread of Valley fever, a fungal respiratory disease that causes an estimated 700 to 1,100 deaths per year, mostly in the U.S. Southwest. Valley fever is already on the rise, with cases in Arizona, one of the hotspots for the disease, doubling from about 64 cases per 100,000 people in 2005 to 145 cases per 100,000 people in 2022. As the West warms and dries, Valley fever is likely to spread from its stronghold in the Southwest and become endemic in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota, putting millions more people at risk.

The infectious disease risk from natural disasters tends to stack on top of other health problems stemming from these catastrophes. Flooded buildings can harbor mold that can worsen allergies, asthma and other respiratory illnesses. When major storms cause power loss, people turn to generators for electricity, which release pollutants linked to asthma. Though it's often hard to track the effects of these disasters, one study found that flooded regions after Tropical Storm Imelda in Texas in 2019 saw 10% more emergency department visits for asthma than nonflooded regions did.

Moreover, the threat to life and livelihood from these disasters can cause mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, Romanello said. The problems compound on each other, she said; already, she has heard reports from Africa about malaria outbreaks, fed by warming, and health workers struggling to reach the affected regions because flooding, also exacerbated by warming, has washed out roads.

"What is the most concerning aspect is that all of that is happening together, so we're seeing all of this risk being exacerbated at once," she said.

Jace White of Fresno acquired Valley Fever while working on his family farm. Valley fever is predicted to become more common with climate change. (Image credit: The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Antibiotic resistance on the rise

As Newman and Shan's work shows, as spots around the U.S. face new infection risks, existing treatments may become less effective. Their work showed that drought concentrated the natural antibiotics that bacteria make in the soil, making it harder for bacteria susceptible to the compounds to survive. As a result, the microbes with genes for antibiotic resistance did better. The problem for human health is that bacteria are very good at gene swapping, so these soil microbes can easily pass their antibiotic resistance superpowers to bacteria that infect people, their research showed.

"Gardening, breathing dust ‪—‬ that's how it happens," Newman said of human and soil bacteria coming into contact. "We are constantly encountering bacteria in our environment."

A microscope image showing colorful cylindrical cells against a blue background

A scanning-electron microscope image of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Recent research suggests that drought could fuel the rise of drug-resistant versions of such pathogenic bacteria. (Image credit: CDC/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The researchers found an association between drought and antibiotic resistance reported by hospitals.

They aren't the only ones. A recent study on Salmonella, a bacterium that causes about 1.35 million cases of food poisoning each year in the U.S. alone, found that temperature and rainfall promote antibiotic resistance in this microbe. "Globally, climate change was linked to about a 10% increase in Salmonella resistance gene abundance," said study first author Zhen-Chao Zhou, an ecology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Other microbes show similar effects.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

Meanwhile, warmer conditions help bacteria grow faster, adapt to stress and swap resistance genes, Zhou said, while drought concentrates them in limited water sources where they mingle freely. Climate-change-induced flooding can then, in theory, spread the resistant genes far and wide.

Combating the compounding risks requires both public health and climate mitigation approaches, experts say. Not only does the world need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but people also need to use antibiotics more carefully, Zhou said; improve sanitation practices, such as sewage management, around the world so that antibiotic-resistant strains don't spread as easily; strengthen food safety; and expand disease surveillance. The public also needs to understand that climate change is a health issue, Romanello said.

"When we talk about tackling greenhouse gas emissions," she said, "what we're talking about is a sustainable livable future with healthy economies."

Help us improve Live Science Pro: We're always trying to make our content better. Leave us feedback about Pro here.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/infectious-diseases-will-seed-new-ground-as-the-planet-warms-heres-where-theyll-spread - + - dPPXAVhwmf7AnhzTH4xfe6 - - Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:58:25 +0000 Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:43:18 +0000 - + 4NSmEXXFoaQ7NXkpg2eCj8 + + Thu, 10 Sep 2026 17:00:15 +0000 Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:58:55 +0000 + - - - - + + + false + false + true + + + + - - + + + +
Burning Up

As the planet warms, our environment will be transformed, but so will our bodies. In this series, 'Burning up,' we investigate the health impacts of climate change, focusing on heat, air quality, food and infection risk. We also evaluate the promising solutions that could help us adapt to our warmer future.

To the untrained eye, Xiaoyu Shan's lab bench looked like a home gardening experiment gone bad: dishes filled with dirt — some that looked like mud pies and others that were bone-dry — and not a plant to be seen.

But those dishes held a warning. The dirt that Shan, a postdoctoral research associate in biology and biological engineering at Caltech, was studying contained soil microbes. And those soil microbes were exhibiting a concerning propensity: In dried-out soil, they were evolving to become more antibiotic resistant.

The study describing those findings, published in March, systematically showed that drought conditions could fuel the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Most of this resistance is driven by humans' misuse of antibiotics, which spurs bacteria to evolve genes that help them ward off the drugs. But the Caltech study raised a new worry: As many places face increased drought conditions, climate change itself could act as a selective pressure that could supercharge the evolution of these drug-resistant superbugs.

"We can expect to have more resistant bacteria being selected for in certain places around the globe," said Dianne Newman, a Caltech microbiologist and co-author of the study.

Increased antibiotic resistance is just one way that climate change is likely to put new populations at risk of multiple types of infections.

And this increased disease burden will coincide with climate change scrambling supply chains, eroding nutrition and stressing our health in other ways.

"No individual metric really does justice to the overall risk and health and well-being of these multiple stressors being exacerbated all at once and compounding each other," said Marina Romanello, a principal research fellow at the Institute of Global Health at University College London.

Warm-weather disease

In the small mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, which lies at an elevation of 7,740 feet (2,360 meters), May often brings snowstorms that can blanket the ground in white even as the sun starts to bake the plains at lower elevations. But on Memorial Day 2026, the forest floor was dry and ticks quested their way along blades of grass, seeking a blood meal.

A mild winter in most of the country means ticks — and the diseases they carry — are a rising concern. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that emergency department visits for tick bites were at their highest for that month since 2017. That trend isn't a one-off, according to the CDC; as temperatures rise, insects and arthropods can survive longer in the year and farther north.

Public health workers in Ontario do a survey for black-legged ticks. Lyme disease, which is carried by the ticks, is spreading in new areas as the climate warms. (Image credit: Bernard Weil via Getty Images)

As a result, vector-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease (spread by black-legged ticks in the Ixodes genus) and West Nile virus (spread by mosquitoes) will become more common in increasingly northerly locations. Already, alpha-gal syndrome, which is not an infection but is transmitted by the Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum) and causes an incurable allergy to red meat, is also seeing a dramatic rise as the species expands its range across the Northeast. Positive tests for antibodies to the alpha-gal molecule have increased by 100 times between 2013 and 2024.

Right now, almost half a million people are treated for Lyme disease each year, and the CDC records more than 8,000 cases of other tick-borne diseases annually across the country. It's not clear how this will change as the climate warms. One 2022 study found major increases in Lyme disease only at levels of warming of 6.3 to 9.9 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 to 5.5 degrees Celsius) by 2100, but that much warming that fast is now considered an implausible scenario. However, the researchers saw a huge amount of uncertainty in the numbers, given the number of variables that affect whether a spreading tick population will transmit more disease, such as how often people go outside or what steps they take to avoid tick bites. Tick-borne illnesses are likely also underreported, so even the true number of illnesses transmitted each year right now is unknown.

But ticks are responsible for spreading 90% of all vector-borne diseases in the U.S., so any trends in the suite of illnesses spread by ticks are likely to affect thousands to tens of thousands of people.

An even more ubiquitous bloodsucker, the mosquito, currently spreads only a few diseases in the U.S. The most common and most serious is West Nile virus, which mosquitoes catch from feeding on infected birds. As of Sept. 8, 504 cases of West Nile virus had been reported in the U.S. in 2026, with 363 of them affecting the central nervous system. And because fewer than 1% of West Nile cases progress to the central nervous system, those numbers likely represent a dramatic underreporting of milder cases, which can cause months of fatigue in some people, in addition to acute flu-like symptoms, such as fever, headache and body aches.

Mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile are expected to spread more quickly in warming temperatures. Heat helps mosquitoes stick around longer during the year, much like it does for ticks. It also speeds up the transmission and replication of the virus inside the mosquito, since the insects are cold-blooded and thus their metabolism is ruled by the weather.

"Except for places that are already really, really warm, we should expect that the replication rate of the virus inside the mosquito will speed up," said John Drake, director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia. "That shortens the generation time, and that means we expect there to be more transmission."

Even though mosquitos love water, climate-related drought could ironically nearly triple the number of human West Nile cases in the U.S. over the next 30 years from around 2,000 reported cases (according to CDC data) to between 5,000 and 6,000. That's likely because in drier conditions, more mosquitoes are infected, possibly because birds, the intermediate host of the virus, either congregate more closely with mosquitoes around water sources or breed less readily in drought, meaning the fraction of birds that carry the virus is higher than in more water-abundant times.

Except for places that are already really, really warm, we should expect that the replication rate of the virus inside the mosquito will speed up. That shortens the generation time, and that means we expect there to be more transmission.

John Drake, director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia

Mosquito-borne diseases long ago eradicated from the U.S. could also resurge with warming temperatures. The southeastern United States will become more prone to malaria and dengue fever transmission under all levels of warming; summer 2026 saw more than 40 locally-acquired cases of dengue fever in Florida. Public health surveillance and disease-control measures have largely stopped those transmission chains, but the likelihood is that society will have to pour more money into beating these diseases back again in future decades. For example, there are malaria vaccines approved for children, but currently, they are recommended only in areas where the illnesses are endemic. If malaria were commonly found in the southern U.S., millions of Americans might need vaccines, including susceptible adults.

"If we were to get endemic diseases like those in the U.S. again, it could become a huge burden and it could be quite costly," Drake said.

Disaster and disease

Flooding is another factor that's exacerbating vector-borne disease under climate change. As climate change worsens, extreme weather events will, too. Because warm air can hold more moisture, many areas will see increased episodes of heavy rainfall and hurricanes will become more intense.

"Flooding creates habitat for these mosquitoes," Drake said.

Disasters also spur the spread of other diseases that are usually quite rare in the U.S., such as leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that spreads from animals to humans via animal urine. Floodwaters may be contaminated by the bodies of drowned animals; in 2022, after Hurricane Fiora hit Puerto Rico, leptospirosis cases leapt by a factor of 3.6 to over 10 cases a week.

After Hurricane Matthew, emergency visits for gastrointestinal disease increased 11%. (Image credit: Raleigh News & Observer via Getty Images)

After Hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018, respectively, North Carolina saw an 11% increase in emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illnesses. Black and American Indian residents were the most affected, likely because discrimination over generations has disproportionately pushed Black Americans and Native Americans to less desirable, more flood-prone land, the researchers found.

Cycles of precipitation, drought and subsequent dust storms can spur the spread of Valley fever, a fungal respiratory disease that causes an estimated 700 to 1,100 deaths per year, mostly in the U.S. Southwest. Valley fever is already on the rise, with cases in Arizona, one of the hotspots for the disease, doubling from about 64 cases per 100,000 people in 2005 to 145 cases per 100,000 people in 2022. As the West warms and dries, Valley fever is likely to spread from its stronghold in the Southwest and become endemic in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota, putting millions more people at risk.

The infectious disease risk from natural disasters tends to stack on top of other health problems stemming from these catastrophes. Flooded buildings can harbor mold that can worsen allergies, asthma and other respiratory illnesses. When major storms cause power loss, people turn to generators for electricity, which release pollutants linked to asthma. Though it's often hard to track the effects of these disasters, one study found that flooded regions after Tropical Storm Imelda in Texas in 2019 saw 10% more emergency department visits for asthma than nonflooded regions did.

Moreover, the threat to life and livelihood from these disasters can cause mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, Romanello said. The problems compound on each other, she said; already, she has heard reports from Africa about malaria outbreaks, fed by warming, and health workers struggling to reach the affected regions because flooding, also exacerbated by warming, has washed out roads.

"What is the most concerning aspect is that all of that is happening together, so we're seeing all of this risk being exacerbated at once," she said.

Jace White of Fresno acquired Valley Fever while working on his family farm. Valley fever is predicted to become more common with climate change. (Image credit: The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Antibiotic resistance on the rise

As Newman and Shan's work shows, as spots around the U.S. face new infection risks, existing treatments may become less effective. Their work showed that drought concentrated the natural antibiotics that bacteria make in the soil, making it harder for bacteria susceptible to the compounds to survive. As a result, the microbes with genes for antibiotic resistance did better. The problem for human health is that bacteria are very good at gene swapping, so these soil microbes can easily pass their antibiotic resistance superpowers to bacteria that infect people, their research showed.

"Gardening, breathing dust ‪—‬ that's how it happens," Newman said of human and soil bacteria coming into contact. "We are constantly encountering bacteria in our environment."

A microscope image showing colorful cylindrical cells against a blue background

A scanning-electron microscope image of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Recent research suggests that drought could fuel the rise of drug-resistant versions of such pathogenic bacteria. (Image credit: CDC/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The researchers found an association between drought and antibiotic resistance reported by hospitals.

They aren't the only ones. A recent study on Salmonella, a bacterium that causes about 1.35 million cases of food poisoning each year in the U.S. alone, found that temperature and rainfall promote antibiotic resistance in this microbe. "Globally, climate change was linked to about a 10% increase in Salmonella resistance gene abundance," said study first author Zhen-Chao Zhou, an ecology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Other microbes show similar effects.

Exclusive to Live Science Pro

Meanwhile, warmer conditions help bacteria grow faster, adapt to stress and swap resistance genes, Zhou said, while drought concentrates them in limited water sources where they mingle freely. Climate-change-induced flooding can then, in theory, spread the resistant genes far and wide.

Combating the compounding risks requires both public health and climate mitigation approaches, experts say. Not only does the world need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but people also need to use antibiotics more carefully, Zhou said; improve sanitation practices, such as sewage management, around the world so that antibiotic-resistant strains don't spread as easily; strengthen food safety; and expand disease surveillance. The public also needs to understand that climate change is a health issue, Romanello said.

"When we talk about tackling greenhouse gas emissions," she said, "what we're talking about is a sustainable livable future with healthy economies."

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+ + ]]> + + - <![CDATA[ Canon 15x50 IS All Weather binocular review ]]> - https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/canon-15x50-is-all-weather + <![CDATA[ 1 million people's genes reveal the heritability of the Big Five personality traits — and it's complicated ]]> + A family photo album can reflect how physical traits, such as blue eyes or lanky limbs, have been passed down — but a new analysis suggests that the way personality emerges across generations is far more complicated.

The meta-analysis, published Sept. 2 in the journal Nature, is the largest of its kind ever attempted. The work identified over 1,200 genes linked to five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism.

However, the scientists behind the study said its most important conclusion is that no single gene determines whether an individual will have a particular personality trait. Instead, thousands of genes exert tiny effects that are likely impossible to disentangle from environmental factors that shape our behavior.

Twins and DNA sequencers

Researchers have studied the link between genes and behavior for decades. Before the ability to analyze the genome in detail, many early studies looked to identical twins.

Knowing that identical twins share nearly 100% of their genetic material, scientists compared their traits with those of nonidentical twins and other siblings. Some studies compared twins raised in the same home with those raised in different homes in an attempt to separate the influence of upbringing from genetics. These efforts concluded that personality was roughly 50% heritable. ("Heritability" measures how much of the variance seen in a given trait can be explained by genes.)

Genetic studies of personality traits previously relied on comparisons between twins. Now, genetic sequencing technologies have advanced the field. (Image credit: Johner Images via Getty Images)

The advent of gene sequencing enabled geneticists to calculate the influence of genes with greater precision than twin studies did. The most powerful tool in this arsenal is the genome-wide association study (GWAS), which can link traits to gene variants in detail. These statistical analyses require sample sizes in the millions, though.

The new study was a large collaborative project called the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium, which brought together 46 cohorts of participants who'd had their genomes sequenced. Each person had been asked something related to one of the Big Five personality traits. The team had data from roughly 600,000 people about the first four traits — extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences — and data from over 1.1 million people about their levels of neuroticism.

Generally, as geneticists have leveraged larger and more powerful GWAS, many traits have shown increased heritability because these bigger studies can identify more subtle genetic links, said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in the new study. But "with personality, it was really clear from the get-go that it was different," Roberts said.

Earlier GWAS had suggested that the heritability of personality from common gene variants was roughly 5% to 15%, far lower than the estimate suggested by twin studies. The new work has confirmed those low numbers, said study co-author Michel Nivard, a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K.

It may be that GWAS do not capture extremely rare variants that might link personality traits in certain families, which means the heritability may be slightly underestimated, Nivard suggested. Additionally, twins are more likely to rate their personalities as similar for reasons unrelated to genetics, so the twin studies may have overestimated the heritability of personality, Nivard noted.

Cutting out confounders

It can be difficult to control for confounding factors in GWAS. For example, if scientists were investigating the influence of genes on academic achievement, genetics only tells part of the story; a person's socioeconomic status and access to books and tutoring also influence their education.

But in this case, Nivard and his colleagues did not find confounders in measuring personality. The researchers found that the genetic effects on personality are the same within families as they are among unrelated individuals.

"We've basically been able to rule out that there's any straightforward, simple social processes by which your parents directly influence your personality," Nivard said.

A key takeaway from the study should be not to focus too much on the different contributions of genes versus environmental factors in a trait as complex as personality, Roberts said. Our moods and minds are a collaboration between the two factors, not a tug-of-war, he argued.

Related stories

A study to properly measure this interplay would be vastly expensive and would require following participants for decades. "This is where the limitation of human genetics research is really profound," Roberts said. Part of the problem, he added, is that while our DNA sequence is fixed, how the body accesses and reads DNA varies significantly depending on the environment a person finds themselves in. In other words, which genes get turned on and when are variable factors.

Assessing this enmeshed relationship using only the DNA code we are born with is like trying to predict every move of a couple's dance by looking at how they hold each other before the music starts up.

Nivard and his team can now use this powerful data source to learn more about personalities within groups of people, he said. Nivard predicted that, even once geneticists have mapped all the rare gene variants that may influence personality, some genetic influence will still go unaccounted for; processes such as the interaction between the environment and gene expression are still not fully understood. He called these the "unknown unknowns." Identifying these factors is the next frontier for the genetics of personality.

"It's where we're headed," Nivard said.

]]> + https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/1-million-peoples-genes-reveal-the-heritability-of-the-big-five-personality-traits-and-its-complicated - + - QaBVs2sEaCNiz9p4xzDepg - - Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000 Mon, 02 Feb 2026 13:46:43 +0000 - - - - - - + 3fDxwFvaJWMNtoqc7fF5G7 + + Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:30:00 +0000 + + + + false + false + false + + + + - - + + + +

A family photo album can reflect how physical traits, such as blue eyes or lanky limbs, have been passed down — but a new analysis suggests that the way personality emerges across generations is far more complicated.

The meta-analysis, published Sept. 2 in the journal Nature, is the largest of its kind ever attempted. The work identified over 1,200 genes linked to five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism.

However, the scientists behind the study said its most important conclusion is that no single gene determines whether an individual will have a particular personality trait. Instead, thousands of genes exert tiny effects that are likely impossible to disentangle from environmental factors that shape our behavior.

Twins and DNA sequencers

Researchers have studied the link between genes and behavior for decades. Before the ability to analyze the genome in detail, many early studies looked to identical twins.

Knowing that identical twins share nearly 100% of their genetic material, scientists compared their traits with those of nonidentical twins and other siblings. Some studies compared twins raised in the same home with those raised in different homes in an attempt to separate the influence of upbringing from genetics. These efforts concluded that personality was roughly 50% heritable. ("Heritability" measures how much of the variance seen in a given trait can be explained by genes.)

Genetic studies of personality traits previously relied on comparisons between twins. Now, genetic sequencing technologies have advanced the field. (Image credit: Johner Images via Getty Images)

The advent of gene sequencing enabled geneticists to calculate the influence of genes with greater precision than twin studies did. The most powerful tool in this arsenal is the genome-wide association study (GWAS), which can link traits to gene variants in detail. These statistical analyses require sample sizes in the millions, though.

The new study was a large collaborative project called the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium, which brought together 46 cohorts of participants who'd had their genomes sequenced. Each person had been asked something related to one of the Big Five personality traits. The team had data from roughly 600,000 people about the first four traits — extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences — and data from over 1.1 million people about their levels of neuroticism.

Generally, as geneticists have leveraged larger and more powerful GWAS, many traits have shown increased heritability because these bigger studies can identify more subtle genetic links, said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in the new study. But "with personality, it was really clear from the get-go that it was different," Roberts said.

Earlier GWAS had suggested that the heritability of personality from common gene variants was roughly 5% to 15%, far lower than the estimate suggested by twin studies. The new work has confirmed those low numbers, said study co-author Michel Nivard, a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K.

It may be that GWAS do not capture extremely rare variants that might link personality traits in certain families, which means the heritability may be slightly underestimated, Nivard suggested. Additionally, twins are more likely to rate their personalities as similar for reasons unrelated to genetics, so the twin studies may have overestimated the heritability of personality, Nivard noted.

Cutting out confounders

It can be difficult to control for confounding factors in GWAS. For example, if scientists were investigating the influence of genes on academic achievement, genetics only tells part of the story; a person's socioeconomic status and access to books and tutoring also influence their education.

But in this case, Nivard and his colleagues did not find confounders in measuring personality. The researchers found that the genetic effects on personality are the same within families as they are among unrelated individuals.

"We've basically been able to rule out that there's any straightforward, simple social processes by which your parents directly influence your personality," Nivard said.

A key takeaway from the study should be not to focus too much on the different contributions of genes versus environmental factors in a trait as complex as personality, Roberts said. Our moods and minds are a collaboration between the two factors, not a tug-of-war, he argued.

Related stories

A study to properly measure this interplay would be vastly expensive and would require following participants for decades. "This is where the limitation of human genetics research is really profound," Roberts said. Part of the problem, he added, is that while our DNA sequence is fixed, how the body accesses and reads DNA varies significantly depending on the environment a person finds themselves in. In other words, which genes get turned on and when are variable factors.

Assessing this enmeshed relationship using only the DNA code we are born with is like trying to predict every move of a couple's dance by looking at how they hold each other before the music starts up.

Nivard and his team can now use this powerful data source to learn more about personalities within groups of people, he said. Nivard predicted that, even once geneticists have mapped all the rare gene variants that may influence personality, some genetic influence will still go unaccounted for; processes such as the interaction between the environment and gene expression are still not fully understood. He called these the "unknown unknowns." Identifying these factors is the next frontier for the genetics of personality.

"It's where we're headed," Nivard said.

+ + ]]> + + \ No newline at end of file