Using data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found that IRS 3 — a bloated giant star orbiting just 0.55 light-years to Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s central black hole — is still forging silicate dust and harboring water molecules despite the Galaxy’s most extreme radiation environment. Mid-infrared image of the IRS 3 environment, observed with VLT/NACO...

New simulations suggest supernova explosions of the Universe’s first stars scattered the ingredients for rocky planets only 100 million years after the Big Bang, with water already present in some planet-forming disks. This artist’s impression shows a field of Population III stars as they would have appeared a mere 100 million years after the Big Bang. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J....

Archaeologists in southwestern Germany have unearthed two miniature bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory, among the smallest and most delicate examples of Ice Age art ever found. Two bird figurines found at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany. Image credit: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen / Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art. The two ancient figurines, roughly 2 cm (0.8 inches) long and weighing...

Paleontologists studying a 236-million-year-old cynodont fossil from Argentina say they have found the earliest evidence yet of viviparity (live birth) in the evolutionary line that leads to mammals, pushing back the origin of this reproductive strategy by as much as 90 to 95 million years. Life reconstruction of a group of Chiniquodon theotonicus individuals, a pregnant female (left) as well as...

A previously unrecognized species of the antthrush genus Chamaeza has been discovered in the isolated highland rainforests of northeastern Brazil. The Baturité antthrush (Chamaeza baturitensis). Image credit: Fábio Nunes. “Chamaeza comprises ground-dwelling suboscine birds specialized for life in the understory of Neotropical forests,” said Universidade Estadual Paulista ornithologist Vagner...

For decades, physicists have puzzled over a deceptively simple question: how does a proton carry its baryon number, the quantum property that marks it as matter rather than antimatter? According to a new paper by researchers with the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the baryon number appears to be carried not by the proton’s three quarks alone, but by the web of gluons...

Manuka honey, the New Zealand product long touted for wound care, may also hold potential against bacteria that cause respiratory infections, including strains resistant to common antibiotics, and its antibacterial effects arise from the combined action of methylglyoxal (MGO) and additional components within the honey matrix, according to new research led by Aston University. Allcott et al. show...

Neanderthals vanished roughly 42,000 years ago, but a piece of their biology appears to be quietly at work in some people today, according to a new study led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Aspects of Neanderthal anatomy live on in people today. Image credit: Holger Neumann / Neanderthal Museum. “Neanderthals are the most well-known among archaic human...

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;...

Manuka honey, the New Zealand product long touted for wound care, may also hold potential against bacteria that cause respiratory infections, including strains resistant to common antibiotics, and its antibacterial effects arise from the combined action of methylglyoxal (MGO) and additional components within the honey matrix, according to new research led by Aston University. Allcott et al. show...