An overlooked particle could have altered the early Universe in ways that helped produce the imbalance between matter and antimatter, a new theoretical study suggests. Rishav Roshan & Sudipta Show demonstrated that the decoupled right-handed neutrino can drive an epoch of early matter domination, significantly modifying the expansion history of the Universe. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian...

Uranus and Neptune are often described as near-twins, but a new study suggests their chemistry, and possibly their histories, may differ more than expected. The materials making up Neptune and Uranus likely came from different regions in the protoplanetary disk around the young Sun. Image credit: SwRI. “Uranus and Neptune may resemble twins today, but their chemistry is telling us that they are...

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...

A 518-million-year-old ambulacrarian fossil from China suggests that the common ancestor of starfish and their relatives was not a burrowing worm; it was probably a tentacled animal that fed from the water around it. An artist’s impression of Yujingia glutenotunica. Image credit: He et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.08.053. Ambulacraria is one of the two major branches of deuterostome animals, and...

Honeybees pack tens of thousands of nestmates into a small space, a setup that should invite disease. New research led by the University of Sydney suggests part of their protection is a map of antimicrobial chemistry laid out across the hive. Fernandes et al. investigated how chemical defenses contribute to colony-level immunity using the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) as a model system. Image...

An overlooked particle could have altered the early Universe in ways that helped produce the imbalance between matter and antimatter, a new theoretical study suggests. Rishav Roshan & Sudipta Show demonstrated that the decoupled right-handed neutrino can drive an epoch of early matter domination, significantly modifying the expansion history of the Universe. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian...

People who drink tea regularly appear less likely to develop heart and vascular disease than people who don’t, according to a new study published today in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Ye et al. found an 11% lower risk of vascular disease among regular tea drinkers. Image credit: Ye et al., doi: 10.1111/joim.70172. “This large study adds to existing observational evidence linking regular...

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;...

People who drink tea regularly appear less likely to develop heart and vascular disease than people who don’t, according to a new study published today in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Ye et al. found an 11% lower risk of vascular disease among regular tea drinkers. Image credit: Ye et al., doi: 10.1111/joim.70172. “This large study adds to existing observational evidence linking regular...