HD 80606b has one of the most extreme orbits of any known exoplanet and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just caught it getting flash-fried as it whipped past its star. An artist’s impression of the hot-Jupiter exoplanet HD 80606b. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph Olmsted, STScI. First discovered in April 2001, HD 80606b is a highly eccentric exoplanet about four times more massive...

The main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, a heavily cratered fragment born from a catastrophic breakup 155 million years ago, appears to wobble through space while preserving clues to the migration of water-rich worlds in the early Solar System, according to a new analysis of images and data from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. The asteroid Donaldjohanson is composed of two heavily cratered lobes, connected...

Scientists have uncovered compelling new evidence that early human ancestors, likely Homo erectus, were deliberately bringing fire into Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa as far back as 1.79 million years ago. Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. Image credit: Michael Chazan. Wonderwerk Cave is located 60 km south of the town of Kuruman in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. The site has yielded a fossil...

A 113-million-year-old pterosaur fossil from northeastern Brazil has yielded rare evidence of soft tissues, organic molecules and chemical traces of a diet heavy in fish and cephalopods such as squid or nautilus relatives. Grice et al. integrate organic geochemical analyses with high-resolution micro-mineral imaging of a three-dimensionally preserved Cretaceous pterosaur wing phalanx from Brazil...

Marine biologists have identified a new species of the shark genus Hemiscyllium in the waters of eastern Papua New Guinea, expanding a remarkable group of reef-dwelling sharks known for using their four fins to ‘walk’ across the seafloor. Hemiscyllium dudgeonae, male paratype, Nubwageta, Milne Bay province, Papua New Guinea. Image credit: M.V. Erdmann. Walking sharks comprise ten similar species...

Physicists with LHCb Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have detected the elusive Ωcc⁺ baryon, a particle containing two charm quarks and one strange quark, completing a long-sought family of doubly charmed baryons first predicted over half a century ago. An artist’s impression of the doubly charmed Ωcc⁺ baryon. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez / CERN. “Quarks are basic...

Copper diacetyl bis(4-methyl-3-thiosemicarbazone), or Cu(ATSM), restored a key waste-removal system in the brain, reducing toxic amyloid-beta buildup and improving spatial memory in lab models of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a team of researchers at Monash University. Using the APP/PS1 mouse model of familial Alzheimer’s disease, Pyun et al. investigated the effect of Cu(ATSM) on brain microvascular...

The extinct Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea) and today’s African and Asian lions (Panthera leo) belong to separate evolutionary lineages that diverged roughly 1.7 million years ago — far earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of 12 cave lion genomes spanning more than 100,000 years. Cave lions painted in the Chauvet Cave, France. Lions are among the most abundant and...

Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593 have uncovered evidence of an asteroid impact that occurred 3.5 billion years ago on the Moon, helping to reconstruct a period of intense bombardment that left lasting marks across the inner Solar System. XRF map of 7.53 g slice of NWA 12593: calcium (Ca) and iron (Fe) illustrate the location and diversity of clasts;...

Researchers at Binghamton University have applied a 70-year-old theory of information to the viral word game Wordle, revealing how a carefully chosen first guess can dramatically improve a player’s chances of solving the puzzle. Wordle, a popular word-guessing game, challenges players to identify a five-letter secret word through iterative guesses and feedback on letter placement. The players must...