Using near-UV spectroscopic data from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered four white dwarfs orbiting nearby red dwarf stars. These binary systems are all located within 20 parsecs (65 light-years) of the Sun, and one of the white dwarfs is the ninth closest to our star. An artist’s impression of a red dwarf with a white...

On July 5, 2026, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft completed the first asteroid encounter of its extended mission, flying past the two-lobed near-Earth asteroid Torifune and returning its close-up visible and thermal images. This image of the near-Earth asteroid Torifune was captured with the ONC-T instrument aboard JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on July 5, 2026. Image...

For as long as readers have pored over Homer’s Odyssey they have pictured Ithaca, the homeland Odysseus fights for ten years to reach, as an island unto itself. Now, two scholars say that assumption — held since antiquity — is simply wrong, arguing that Ithaca was a peninsula on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Paliki peninsula on the island of Kefalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece. Image...

Paleontologists in Uruguay have identified a new species of aeolosaurine titanosaur from a pair of remarkably well-preserved tailbones unearthed in the 1980s near the Uruguay River. Mesetasaurus protector. Image credit: Merlina Ramírez. Mesetasaurus protector lived in what is now Uruguay between 86 and 72 million years ago (Late Cretaceous epoch). The new species was a member of a group of titanosaurian...

Slow-motion video reveals that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) respond to sweet and bitter tastes with distinct, context-dependent behaviors resembling mammalian expressions of pleasure and disgust, adding fresh evidence to the debate over insect consciousness. Zhou et al. show that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) display analogous orofacial reactions to tastes that reflect...

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...

A new analysis of data from the Western Australian-based Raine Study suggests that two humble vegetable groups — legumes and cruciferous vegetables — may play an outsize role in protecting young adults from early cardiometabolic risk, though the benefits appear to diverge sharply between men and women. McNamara et al. suggest higher intakes of legumes and cruciferous vegetables are associated...

In an analysis of 390 traditionally cultivated cacao trees representing traditional Amazonian varieties, researchers identified four previously unknown genetic lineages, with two showing ancestry linked to exceptional flavor potential and offering new opportunities for growers and chocolate makers. Motilal et al. collected cacao samples from eight departments of Peru. Image credit: Fernando Graniel. Cacao...

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;...

For as long as readers have pored over Homer’s Odyssey they have pictured Ithaca, the homeland Odysseus fights for ten years to reach, as an island unto itself. Now, two scholars say that assumption — held since antiquity — is simply wrong, arguing that Ithaca was a peninsula on the Greek island of Kefalonia. Paliki peninsula on the island of Kefalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece. Image...