High-resolution images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Large Binocular Telescope reveal that the E-type asteroid (44) Nysa may be unlike any other world in the Solar System, with three connected lobes and a newly discovered satellite that could help explain how the bizarre object formed. This image of the Nysa system was captured on February 15, 2026. Image credit: Minker et al., arXiv:...

NASA’s Curiosity rover has stumbled on the largest patch of polygon-shaped ground fractures it has ever seen on Mars, a discovery that could reveal more about the planet’s watery past. The polygon fractures discovered by Curiosity in Gale crater, Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS. The unusual terrain lies in a valley known as Valle Grande on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp inside...

Archaeologists in southwestern Germany have unearthed two miniature bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory, among the smallest and most delicate examples of Ice Age art ever found. Two bird figurines found at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany. Image credit: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen / Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art. The two ancient figurines, roughly 2 cm (0.8 inches) long and weighing...

Paleontologists studying the La Brea Tar Pits, one of the world’s richest Ice Age fossil sites, have identified a previously unknown species of spadefoot toad that lived in what is now California during the latest Ice Age, adding a scientifically significant creature to a fossil record long dominated by mammoths, saber-toothed cats and dire wolves. Reconstruction of Spea labreae (center and right)...

New research led by University of Lethbridge scientists offers the most detailed look yet at how the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) — the flightless bird driven to extinction by the 1600s — actually perceived its world, suggesting the ‘stupid bird’ had a far more complex sensory life than its reputation implies. The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) by Frederick William Frohawk, 1905. The dodo and...

Using the largest sample yet of particles called beauty mesons, physicists with the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) refined a decades-old test of the subtle imbalance that let our Universe exist at all. Neutral beauty mesons can turn into their own antimatter opposite and back again. Image credit: Ansar Iqbal / CMS. One of the greatest mysteries in physics is why the Universe...

In a perspective paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a team of researchers and health experts calls for a ‘paradigm shift’ in how public health agencies address hypertension, which affects more than 1.28 billion adults worldwide and remains a leading driver of cardiovascular disease. The authors say high blood pressure can be controlled better with a strategy that combines...

New research led by the University of California, Berkeley reveals that beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans, humans interbred with two mysterious ‘ghost’ lineages: one in Africa more than 50,000 years ago, another in Eurasia over 1.7 million years ago. Archaic hominins. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0. “The sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes has transformed our understanding...

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 team of researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Glasgow argues that dietary sugars, not animal foods, may have played the decisive role in the expansion of the human brain over the past 4 million years, as hominin brain size grew nearly fivefold, from about 300 grams in early relatives like Australopithecus afarensis to roughly 1,500 grams in modern Homo sapiens. Their findings...