The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS carries a chemical fingerprint unlike anything in our Solar System, and it may have formed 10 to 12 billion years ago, before our Sun even existed, according to two papers published in the journal Nature. Hubble captured this image of 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 446 million km (277 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / David Jewitt,...

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;...

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 new genus and species of four-winged pennaraptoran dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern China is adding another twist to the story of how birds evolved from their dinosaur ancestors, according Dr. Xing Xu, a paleontologist with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Changzhousaurus sinensis. Image credit: Connor Ashbridge / CC...

New research spanning five continents and vastly different cultures — from the steppes of Mongolia to the rainforests of the Pacific — shows that hunting dogs and their owners cooperate, communicate and rely on each other in nearly identical ways, suggesting the relationship was forged in deep evolutionary time, perhaps 30,000 years ago. Testing situation and hunters with their dogs —...

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...

Researchers at Guangzhou Medical University tracked nearly 88,000 people for over eight years, finding a significant link between daytime light exposure and reduced dementia rates. Zheng et al. uncovered a link between higher levels of daytime light exposure and a lower risk of dementia. Image credit: Zheng et al., doi: 10.1002/gps3.70039. “Dementia, the most common neurodegenerative disease worldwide,...

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...

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;...

Researchers at Guangzhou Medical University tracked nearly 88,000 people for over eight years, finding a significant link between daytime light exposure and reduced dementia rates. Zheng et al. uncovered a link between higher levels of daytime light exposure and a lower risk of dementia. Image credit: Zheng et al., doi: 10.1002/gps3.70039. “Dementia, the most common neurodegenerative disease worldwide,...