Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found that the water ice in the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is mixed with dark, rocky material in tiny grains. The grains’ spectral characteristics differ from those of ice grains in solar system comets but resemble the spectra of some icy worlds beyond Neptune. Protopapa et al. used Webb to compare the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS...

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...

Concornis lacustris, a small enantiornithine bird that lived alongside dinosaurs more than 100 million years ago, has received a life-size makeover, thanks to a reconstruction that combines fossil evidence, digital modeling and traditional sculpture. The sculpture of the enantiornithine bird Concornis lacustris. Image credit: Víctor G. Peco & Sergio M. Nebreda, doi: 10.1016/j.hisbio.2026.100047. Concornis...

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...

Physicists at Northwestern University have held a single positron — the antimatter twin of the electron — in a trap for months and manipulated it one quantum jump at a time. They call their setup a ‘one-positron quantum cyclotron.’ Cloud chamber photograph by the American experimental physicist Carl David Anderson of the first positron ever identified. Antimatter is hard to study...

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), the virus that causes cold sores, reshapes microglia in a narrow region of the brainstem, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Anschutz; whether the changes last, or matter for Alzheimer’s risk, is unknown. Micrograph of a herpes simplex virus. Image credit: CDC / Erskine Palmer. HSV-1 infects a large share of the world’s population...

Researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School have produced the most comprehensive portrait to date of the ‘average’ human genome, drawn from the whole-genome sequences of nearly 900,000 adults in two large research biobanks: UK Biobank and the US-based All of Us program. The average human genome contains 4.3-5.3 million variants, of which 1.5% are rare. Image credit: Wright et al.,...

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;...

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), the virus that causes cold sores, reshapes microglia in a narrow region of the brainstem, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Anschutz; whether the changes last, or matter for Alzheimer’s risk, is unknown. Micrograph of a herpes simplex virus. Image credit: CDC / Erskine Palmer. HSV-1 infects a large share of the world’s population...