Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have captured the first time-resolved, medium-resolution spectra of WISE J085510.83-071442.5, an ultracool brown dwarf just 7.4 light-years away, and found that its atmosphere is anything but static. This artist’s conception shows WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Penn State University. “This...

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

Roughly 18,000 years ago, in what is now northern Ukraine, artists carved small female figurines from mammoth ivory and covered them with zigzags and meanders. New research suggests those designs were not purely invented, they appear to echo the natural patterns inside the tusk. Mizyn figurines. Image credit: Radchenko et al., doi: 10.1038/s40494-026-02988-5. “The study of Upper Paleolithic figurines...

Megacauda sungei, a furry, otter-size mammaliaform that lived in what is now Inner Mongolia, China, some 165 million years ago, was semiaquatic, swimming and foraging in water, with a lifestyle analogous to the living platypus. Life restoration of Megacauda sungei. Image credit: April I. Neander. Megacauda sungei belonged to the docodonts, an extinct group of early mammaliaforms (living mammals and...

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

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

A long-running British trial has found that people who drank diet beverages while trying to lose weight kept the pounds off about as well as those who drank only water. The SWITCH trial assessed the equivalence of NNS beverages — specifically those containing aspartame, acesulfame potassium (acesulfame‑K), and sucralose — and water in aiding weight loss and subsequent weight management...

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

Zircon crystals and impact-altered minerals show that a massive asteroid slammed into what is now the Pilbara region of Western Australia about 3 billion years ago. The North Pole Dome crater: (A) simplified map of the East Pilbara Terrane (EPT, Western Australia), showing Paleoarchean granite domes (pink) and greenstone belts (greens and blues); the North Pole Dome (NPD) lies near the terrane center;...

A long-running British trial has found that people who drank diet beverages while trying to lose weight kept the pounds off about as well as those who drank only water. The SWITCH trial assessed the equivalence of NNS beverages — specifically those containing aspartame, acesulfame potassium (acesulfame‑K), and sucralose — and water in aiding weight loss and subsequent weight management...