News
- Space
This ancient stardust is the oldest ever to be examined in a lab
Tiny grains of stardust that formed long before our solar system are giving new insight into star formation in the Milky Way.
- Physics
The fastest-spinning object ever made could help spot quantum friction in a vacuum
Scientists have developed a torque sensor made with a nanoparticle that can spin more than 300 billion times a minute.
- Animals
Australian fires have incinerated the habitats of up to 100 threatened species
Hundreds of fires that are blazing across the continent’s southeast have created an unprecedented ecological disaster, scientists say.
- Earth
Wildfires could flip parts of the Amazon from a carbon sponge to a source by 2050
Climate change and deforestation could double the area burned by fire in the southern Amazon by 2050, flipping the forest from carbon sponge to source.
- Health & Medicine
What we know — and don’t know — about a new virus causing pneumonia in China
A newfound coronavirus is behind a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia in central China. Experts urge vigilance but say there’s no cause for panic.
- Space
Dark matter pioneer Vera Rubin gets a new observatory named after her
A new effort to study the cosmos is named after Vera Rubin, an astronomer who searched out dark matter and battled sexism.
- Space
A giant wave of gas lurks near our solar system
The Earth and sun are relatively near a newfound, wavy rope of star-forming gas, named the Radcliffe Wave.
- Life
A ‘bonanza’ of new bird species was found on remote Indonesian islands
Bird discoveries typically come in a trickle. But in a remote corner of Southeast Asia, 10 newly described songbird species and subspecies were found.
- Humans
Homo erectus arrived in Indonesia 300,000 years later than previously thought
The extinct, humanlike hominid likely reached the island of Java by around 1.3 million years ago, a study finds.
- Earth
Here’s how climate change may make Australia’s wildfires more common
An El Niño–like ocean-atmosphere weather pattern called the Indian Ocean dipole helped fuel extremely dry conditions in Australia.
- Space
Young stars have been found in an old part of our galaxy
A newly discovered star cluster in the Milky Way’s halo seems to have been deposited there by gas torn off of two satellite galaxies.
- Health & Medicine
Global progress in combating child malnutrition masks problem spots
Low-resource countries are tackling serious childhood malnutrition, national-level statistics show, but a closer look highlights disparities.
