A globular cluster typically has only one ancient star population. New data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope not only confirm the existence of two distinct populations of stars in the ancient stellar system Terzan 5, once classified as a globular cluster, but also provides evidence for two more recent rounds of star formation. This Webb/NIRCam...

Using NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar and NSF’s Green Bank Telescope, astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles, confirmed that the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa scatters radio energy in an unusually strong and complex way not seen on rocky worlds. This artist’s impression shows radar waves from NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar pinging Europa; the radar waves...

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...

An international team of paleontologists from Romania, Hungary and Italy has identified a new genus and species of herbivorous, duck-billed dinosaur from an incomplete skeleton unearthed in the Hațeg Basin, a bowl-shaped depression in the Carpathians of present-day Romania. Kryptohadros kallaiae. Image credit: Tibor Pecsics. Kryptohadros kallaiae roamed our planet during the Maastrichtian age of...

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 at the University of Oxford have engineered a new class of ‘cat states’ — quantum superpositions constructed not from ordinary wave packets, but from deeply exotic, nonclassical components — opening unexpected paths toward more resilient quantum computers. Quantum mechanics defies classical intuition, most famously through Schrödinger’s cat, where systems exist in superpositions...

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;...

University of California, Riverside’s Professor Eric Schwitzgebel and University of Lisbon postdoctoral researcher Jeremy Pober argue that consciousness is substrate flexible, meaning it can arise not just in the biological tissue we find on Earth, but potentially in radically different physical materials found elsewhere in the cosmos. Jeremy Pober & Eric Schwitzgebel argue that conscious experiences...