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Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe and our place in it.
Planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune are extraordinarily common around other stars, yet our solar system has none. New solar-evolution modelling offers a dramatic possibility: the young Sun may have swallowed a rocky planet five to ten times Earth’s mass, leaving chemical and seismic fingerprints that could still be hidden inside it today.
Permanently shadowed craters near the Moon’s poles may preserve water ice that future crews could turn into oxygen and hydrogen-based rocket propellant, potentially supporting lunar bases and eventual Mars expeditions. NASA and IBM have now released an AI model trained on roughly two million lunar images spanning more than 30 data layers—and in testing, it outperformed other leading models at mapping where polar ice is most likely to remain stable.
Singapore built a pilot plant that uses discarded orange, lemon and pineapple peels to dissolve valuable metals out of shredded lithium-ion batteries — the underlying process recovered roughly 90 percent of the cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese in lab tests
A box turtle in Louisiana lost both back legs, so veterinarians built it a tiny wheelchair from LEGO car wheels, syringe cases and epoxy — within minutes Pedro was reversing, turning and moving around on his own again
Astronomers mining NASA’s Chandra archive found 84 previously overlooked “hypersoft” sources across six galaxies, including Andromeda, that appear to emit most of their enormous energy in extreme ultraviolet—radiation that could ionize interstellar gas and influence how quickly galaxies form stars. They remained hidden because their X-rays fall almost entirely below 0.3 keV, while intervening gas absorbs their ultraviolet light.
In 2021, Blue Origin challenged NASA’s decision to award SpaceX its first crewed lunar-lander contract. Now, in a striking reversal, Blue Origin has won a NASA Mars communications-orbiter contract worth up to $700 million—and losing bidder Rocket Lab has filed its own protest with the same federal watchdog.
Freshwater shrimp kept for twenty hours at a caffeine concentration detected in highly polluted rivers spent less time in the dark than shrimp kept at ordinary background levels, and that shift was about the same size as the one caused by a parasite that manipulates them into being eaten by water birds
Four giant three-toed prints found in 2025 near Marmarth, North Dakota turned out to be the first trackway ever attributed to an adult T. rex, and the 66.5-million-year-old sequence records a 13-foot stride — the predator was strolling at 3.5 to 4.5 mph, about the pace of a brisk human walk
Adult females of a millipede newly described from the Kazakh Altai have almost no second pair of legs, the subadult females still have them, and in both of the only two adult females collected the flattened leg bases block the genital opening
The torch of the Statue of Liberty has been closed to the public since 1916, when German saboteurs blew up a munitions depot nearby and shrapnel tore into the statue's arm — in the 110 years since, no visitor has been allowed back up the ladder
