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Top Science News

September 17, 2026

A kimchi-derived bacterium can bind to nanoplastics under gut-like conditions and may help carry them out of the body. In mice, the probiotic more than doubled the amount of nanoplastics detected in feces, pointing to a surprising potential use for ...
Scientists discovered a new frog species in the flooded forests of the western Amazon, distinguishing it from nearly identical relatives through DNA and its unique call. Adenomera varcena highlights how much Amazonian biodiversity remains hidden ...
A pocket-sized, roughly $100 detector can reveal the invisible stream of cosmic particles constantly passing through Earth and even through our bodies. What began as a student physics project is now being used in major experiments, balloon missions, ...
Astronomers have confirmed a Jupiter-size planet less than a million years old, making Elias 2-24 b the youngest known planet and giving scientists a rare look at a world still being born. Its surprisingly rapid formation challenges leading theories ...
New supercomputer simulations suggest JWST’s puzzling Little Red Dots are rapidly growing black holes from the early Universe. Extreme radiation may have helped create unusually massive black hole ...
A natural compound produced by gut bacteria after digesting foods such as pomegranates, walnuts, and berries may help repair and protect the intestinal lining. The discovery reveals a surprising beneficial side of an inflammatory pathway and could ...
Scientists discovered that brain-cell axons may not be smooth tubes as textbooks have shown for more than a century, but instead naturally resemble strings of tiny pearls. Those pearl-like structures can change with neural activity and may help ...
Scientists are testing a counterintuitive way to fight mesothelioma, an aggressive asbestos-linked cancer with few effective treatments. A new experimental mesothelioma drug kills cancer cells by disabling PRX3, an antioxidant defense that tumors ...
Scientists have found the first evidence that liquid may have flowed across Pluto’s surface in the recent past. Dark features on the enormous Sputnik Planitia glacier appear consistent with liquid nitrogen rising through cracks from deep beneath ...
Scientists found that black and green Japanese rice contain unusual, potentially beneficial fats and may be digested more slowly than ordinary white rice. The combination could make these colorful varieties promising ingredients for foods designed ...
Scientists discovered a hidden “immune organ” inside the skull that acts as a rapid first responder against brain cancer in mice. Strengthening this local immune defense improved tumor rejection and survival, raising the possibility of new ...
Scientists have developed a solar-powered desalination system that turns seawater into fresh water while removing nearly all of the leftover salt as a solid instead of producing harmful brine. The self-cleaning technology could also recover valuable ...

Latest Top Headlines

updated 10:45am EDT

Health News

September 17, 2026

A newly discovered communication system in the microscopic “antennae” of cells may help explain how some congenital heart defects develop. When genetic mutations disrupt this system, the effects ...
Ancient DNA reveals that plague was already killing hunter-gatherers in Siberia 5,500 years ago, long before cities and flea-driven epidemics. The prehistoric strains may have been especially ...
Cancer rates are rising in adults under 55, and new research suggests accelerated biological aging may be one piece of the puzzle. Scientists found that people from more recent generations tended to ...
Scientists have discovered that the brain’s short-range wiring may help protect cognition even as gray matter shrinks with age. Healthier connections just beneath the brain’s surface were linked to better language skills and appeared to weaken ...
Scientists discovered that aging cells can use malfunctioning mitochondria to unlock inflammatory genes and keep the immune system stuck in a prolonged state of alert. Blocking one part of this process reduced inflammation and improved healthy aging ...
Scientists found that the 3D organization of DNA is disrupted in several types of brain cells affected by Alzheimer’s disease, altering how important genes are switched on and off. The discovery reveals a previously underexplored layer of the ...
Scientists have uncovered a natural braking system that helps the immune system switch off inflammation and prevent harmful immune cells from building up. Boosting this pathway in people reduced inflammation-related immune changes and sped up pain ...
Semaglutide helped older healthy mice live longer while improving memory, muscle function, blood sugar control, and several biological signs of aging. Its effects went beyond those seen with calorie restriction, raising the possibility that GLP-1 ...
Long-lived bats appear to combine powerful immune defenses with unusual strategies for eliminating damaged cells, potentially helping them avoid cancer and disease for decades. Researchers hope these genetic tricks could eventually reveal new ways ...
Researchers have shown for the first time that human heart muscle cells can regrow after a heart attack. The finding overturns the idea that damaged areas of the heart are completely incapable of regeneration. Scientists now hope to identify ways to ...
UCLA researchers developed ready-made cancer-fighting T cells from cord blood stem cells that can attack solid tumors through two separate detection systems. In mice, a single dose controlled cancer and extended survival while avoiding a dangerous ...
An experimental compound called AP503 significantly strengthened bones in mice by activating GPR133, a receptor that boosts bone formation while slowing bone loss. Because the same treatment has also been linked to stronger muscles, researchers see ...

Latest Health Headlines

updated 10:45am EDT

Physical/Tech News

September 17, 2026

Researchers at Binghamton University have developed a mathematical strategy that can solve Wordle with a 99% success rate. Instead of simply guessing words packed with common letters or choosing the most likely answer, the method uses Shannon ...
A more realistic quantum model has revealed evidence that strange, nearly immobile quasiparticles called fractons could exist in solid materials. Their inability to move freely could make them promising building blocks for unusually robust quantum ...
Princeton researchers have tested an AI system that can monitor and control fusion plasma in milliseconds, reacting far faster than a human operator. In one experiment, it predicted a damaging instability about 200 milliseconds before it appeared ...
MIT researchers have created bacterial “transistors” that can be wired together into living circuits capable of performing calculations and directing chemical signals. One day, these biological computers could coat plant roots or leaves, ...
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered an unexpected form of the Hall effect, overturning the long-held assumption that this electrical response only appears when a magnetic field points perpendicular to a material. Beyond ...
Solar sails pushed by powerful lasers could reach incredible speeds, but relativity may eventually make the light itself work against them. At around 75% of the speed of light, scattered photons can begin creating drag, adding a surprising obstacle ...
NASA has brought two of Swift’s telescopes back online after technical problems derailed a commercial mission intended to rescue the aging observatory by raising its orbit. With atmospheric drag pulling the spacecraft downward faster than ...
Scientists have uncovered hidden complexity inside two ultrathin superconductors that seemed much simpler than they really are. Niobium diselenide and tantalum disulfide appeared to have a single superconducting state, but highly sensitive ...
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey ...
Diamond was thought to be incapable of producing electricity through mechanical deformation, but ultrathin flexible diamond membranes have now shown a strong and repeatable piezoelectric effect. The unexpected discovery could open the door to ...
Scientists have cracked a long-standing chemistry problem, creating nanocrystals from tough metal nitrides that were previously extremely difficult to produce at this scale. The breakthrough could ...
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine Hubble-like detail with a field of view 100 times larger, giving astronomers a sweeping new way to explore the cosmos. Its observations could uncover hidden planets, map billions of cosmic objects, and ...

Latest Physical/Tech Headlines

updated 10:45am EDT

Environment News

September 17, 2026

Ancient rocks from Western Australia suggest water was reaching deep inside Earth more than three billion years ago, long before modern plate tectonics may have fully developed. Researchers propose that water-rich pieces of crust periodically sank ...
Britain’s wasps have become mysteriously scarce this summer, and scientists suspect an unusual combination of temperature swings, heatwaves, and food shortages may be responsible. Even the wasps that remain appear unusually small, potentially ...
The Mediterranean may seem far removed from the world’s major tsunami zones, but history and modern modeling show that destructive waves can strike the French Riviera with surprisingly little warning. Some tsunamis could reach shore in under 10 ...
Insects quietly hold much of the natural world together, yet conservation efforts are overlooking the tropical regions where more than 80 percent of insect species live. Monash University researchers ...
East Antarctica gained an astonishing 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing Antarctica’s long-term decline. Researchers found that warming thousands of miles away in ...
Indonesia’s dangerous peat fires are surging early in the 2026 fire season as a strengthening El Niño and severe drought dry out wetlands that can burn underground for months. These slow smoldering fires are especially destructive because they ...
Puerto Rico’s normally rainy season has instead brought a severe and fast-growing drought. By August 25, three-quarters of the territory was in at least moderate drought, with extreme drought covering 44 percent and some areas receiving less than ...
Morning glories may be getting caught in an evolutionary tug-of-war between surviving climate change and attracting increasingly scarce pollinators. Over just nine years, researchers found that the plants’ rate of adaptation plunged by 96%, even ...
Hundreds of previously overlooked seismic events have been detected beneath Antarctica, including 245 near the marine edge of the Thwaites Glacier. Many appear to be glacial earthquakes caused when huge icebergs break off, capsize, and collide with ...
Researchers have discovered a way to turn notoriously difficult-to-recycle PVC plastic into a key ingredient used in high-performance lubricants such as engine oil. The technique could give mountains ...
Researchers have discovered that Western Australia’s iron-rich rocks can naturally generate hydrogen and that the process may be boosted to produce much larger amounts. If it can be scaled up, the vast formations beneath the Pilbara could become a ...
More than 1,000 volunteers buried cotton underwear across Switzerland to help scientists measure how active different soils are. The faster the fabric disappeared, the more biological activity was taking place underground. Gardens showed the fastest ...

Latest Environment Headlines

updated 10:45am EDT

Society/Education News

September 17, 2026

Common medications may reshape the gut microbiome long after the last dose is taken. In a study of more than 2,500 people, researchers found lasting microbial changes linked not only to antibiotics, but also to antidepressants, beta-blockers, ...
More screen time during infancy and around the start of school was linked to poorer academic performance and weaker working memory years later. The findings suggest that early childhood may contain particularly sensitive windows when screen habits ...
An eight-year Finnish study found that children who spent more time on screens tended to show better cognitive processing as teenagers, challenging common assumptions about screen use. Researchers ...
Coastal communities are facing a hidden threat that is making rising seas far more dangerous: the land beneath them is sinking. New research shows that people in densely populated coastal regions experience an average relative sea-level rise of ...
Astronomers may have been listening for alien civilizations in only a small slice of the radio spectrum while overlooking a largely unexplored range of higher frequencies. Using archived data from the ALMA telescope in Chile, researchers conducted ...
The Backrooms began as a single eerie image of empty yellow rooms, but internet users transformed it into a vast fictional world that feels disturbingly real. Through videos, games, maps, survival ...
Sweden could become an important source of rare earth elements needed for magnets and green technologies. Instead of extracting one target metal, researchers are cataloging everything contained in Swedish mineral deposits. They will then develop ...
Scientists have uncovered new evidence that fireworks can pollute both the air and water in ways that extend beyond the visible smoke. The findings show that leftover debris, fine particles, and airborne chemicals may affect ecosystems and increase ...
Scientists are raising concerns that we may be overlooking evidence of extraterrestrial life even when it is present. Hidden biosignatures, limitations in detection technology, and assumptions about what life should look like can all create ...
Despite centuries of study, scientists are still finding new details and even overlooked structures within the human body. As researchers explore anatomical differences between individuals, it’s becoming clear that the body is far more ...
One of the most celebrated claims about Yellowstone’s wolves is facing a major challenge. Scientists say the study behind the famous trophic cascade story relied on flawed methods that overstated the ecological impact of wolf recovery. Their ...
A new international study finds that middle-aged Americans are lonelier, more depressed, and experiencing worse memory and health than earlier generations. Researchers say growing financial strain, weaker social supports, and chronic stress may ...

Latest Society/Education Headlines

updated 10:45am EDT