New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.

Top Science News

August 26, 2026

Moderate calorie restriction lowered an immune protein called C3 that appears to help drive chronic inflammation as the body ages. Blocking the same protein reduced age related inflammation in mice, ...
DNA from a nearly 190-year-old museum specimen has helped scientists confirm a distinct Himalayan pangolin species hiding in plain sight in Nepal and northern India. The discovery could give conservationists a powerful new way to trace illegally ...
A Manhattan-sized ice island has broken away from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier after years of growing fractures weakened its floating ice tongue. Scientists expect two more huge sections could soon detach, potentially removing about 22 percent of ...
Britain’s postwar sugar rationing created a rare natural experiment that let researchers examine how early sugar exposure might affect health decades later. People who experienced more rationing during their first 1,000 days had lower rates of ...
A compound found in turmeric may help protect blood vessels from some of the damage caused by Type 1 diabetes. In rats, curcumin reduced inflammation, improved cellular signaling, and restored vascular health to levels resembling those of ...
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is now enclosed inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and nearly ready for launch. Its mission could uncover thousands of exoplanets while helping scientists investigate dark matter, dark energy, and the accelerating ...
A single asteroid impact may explain two of Deimos’s most puzzling features: its huge southern depression and unusually smooth, dusty surface. Simulations suggest a roughly 320-meter asteroid struck the Martian moon at an angle, throwing debris ...
A wavelength of light largely missing from indoor LEDs may play an important role in protecting developing eyes from nearsightedness. Researchers found that indigo light completely prevented myopia in tree shrews, whose eyes share important ...
Early-life stress may physically alter how DNA is packaged in the brain, leaving stress-related genes primed to activate more easily years later. In mice, researchers were able to block this effect, preventing the heightened anxiety and stress ...
A low-carb diet may raise LDL cholesterol much more sharply in people who are genetically predisposed to high cholesterol, particularly when they consume lots of saturated fat. The findings could help explain why people following seemingly similar ...
Three forgotten Assyrian kings may have been hiding in plain sight for more than 2,700 years. By piecing together clues from tablets, inscriptions, and an ancient statue, researchers argue that these rulers were omitted from the famous Assyrian King ...
A neuroscientist is challenging the idea that the brain contains a central system that actually “makes” our decisions. What we experience as choosing may instead emerge from the continuous interaction of perception, movement, the body, and the ...

Latest Top Headlines

updated 9:02am EDT

Health News

August 26, 2026

Both too little and too much sleep may be linked to faster aging throughout the body. Researchers analyzing 23 biological aging clocks found the lowest aging levels among people sleeping about 6.4 to 7.8 hours per day. Short or long sleep was also ...
Researchers have uncovered a possible reason why the Alzheimer’s risk gene APOE4 can disrupt the brain long before memory problems begin. In mice, APOE4 increased a protein called Nell2, shrinking ...
A decades-old compound may point to a new way of treating obesity by making the body burn more energy rather than simply reducing appetite. In mice, TOFA increased energy use by as much as 18%, reduced body fat without significant muscle loss, and ...
Older adults with mild cognitive impairment and sleep problems who took at least 5,000 IU of vitamin D daily scored more than 13% higher on a cognitive test than those taking none. The preliminary findings suggest vitamin D could be worth studying ...
People who speak several languages may have brains that age more slowly, with four-language speakers showing brains that appeared about 13 years younger than those of monolinguals. Starting earlier and becoming highly fluent were also linked to a ...
A simple yeast-based food supplement may help restore the immune system’s ability to fight cancer, according to new research in mice. Scientists found that yeast beta-glucan reprogrammed early immune cells in the bone marrow, leading to stronger, ...
A hormone already known for curbing appetite and supporting weight loss may have a surprising second job: protecting the liver from inflammation and scarring. Researchers at McMaster University found that GDF15 activates a previously unknown ...
Ozempic may work in the brain in almost the opposite way scientists expected, activating hunger-linked neurons that appear essential for sustaining fat loss. The surprising discovery in mice could reveal new targets for developing even more ...
Specialized brain scans reveal that schizophrenia is linked to widespread loss of the synapses that connect brain cells, with the left side of the brain hit especially hard. The damage follows a surprisingly organized pattern tied to the brain’s ...
Coffee drinkers may be getting more than an energy boost. A Finnish study found that people who drank more coffee tended to have less total and abdominal fat, more muscle, and healthier metabolic ...
Silver nanoparticles can precisely slice DNA and create longer “sticky ends,” helping genetic fragments join up to five times more efficiently than conventional methods. The breakthrough could ...
Researchers have built microscopic, light-driven robots that can rapidly navigate through liquid, collect bacteria, and deposit them in chosen locations. These tiny “cleaners” could open new possibilities for manipulating cells and microbes with ...

Latest Health Headlines

updated 9:02am EDT

Physical/Tech News

August 26, 2026

Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they ...
Scientists have created an unusually corrosion-resistant stainless steel that could replace costly titanium components used to produce green hydrogen. The breakthrough could reduce structural material costs by roughly 40 times and make ...
Scientists have created the first quantum material that can sort and transport different quantum states of light at room temperature, potentially removing the need for bulky, ultra-cold refrigeration ...
Scientists have generated quantum entanglement directly from sunlight, potentially offering a lower-energy alternative to the lasers normally used in quantum technology. Their outdoor experiment produced entangled photons with about 94% similarity ...
Metal-rich asteroids could one day become hardware stores for Mars, supplying the materials needed to build and repair a growing colony. A new analysis shows that carefully selected asteroids may be reachable with current spacecraft technology. Some ...
A new hollow nanoreactor mimics living cells to make hydrogen peroxide more efficiently using visible light. Its light-trapping cavity and proton-shuttling shell could open new possibilities for cleaner chemical manufacturing and artificial ...
A mathematician working at Anthropic says he used the AI model Claude Fable 5 to uncover a remarkably simple counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, a famous problem that has resisted ...
A person’s sleeping brain may reveal warning signs of dementia long before memory problems begin. Researchers used machine learning to analyze EEG recordings from about 7,000 adults and found that an older-than-expected “brain age” was tied to ...
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 ...
Rice University chemists have found a new way to make neodymium, a rare-earth metal, interact with oxygen. Using a specially designed molecular structure described as a “basket,” the team positioned the atoms so they could form a bond once ...
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft aced its Mars flyby, using the planet’s gravity to speed toward its 2029 encounter with a metal-rich asteroid. The spacecraft tested its cameras, magnetometer, and ...
Scientists have created twisted laser beams that interact differently with right-handed and left-handed molecules, revealing their identity through the fragments they produce. The approach could provide a faster, simpler, and more sensitive way to ...

Latest Physical/Tech Headlines

updated 9:02am EDT

Environment News

August 26, 2026

Nature invented biodegradable plastic long before humans did—and animals may have been feeding on it for hundreds of millions of years. Researchers discovered that dozens of animal species possess ...
Deep underground, bacteria may be capable of doing something remarkable: trapping toxic uranium before it spreads. When researchers fed microbes in uranium-contaminated mine water with glycerol, about 95% of the dissolved uranium disappeared within ...
Animal bones preserved in South Australia’s underwater caves reveal distinctive clues shaped by darkness, algae, bacteria, and other environmental conditions. The findings give scientists a powerful new way to reconstruct how ancient megafauna ...
Thawing Arctic permafrost is releasing ancient carbon into the ocean, raising fears that microbes could turn it into greenhouse gases and accelerate climate change. But sediment cores collected near ...
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 ...
Global warming appears to have shifted into a faster gear. After removing the effects of El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles, researchers found that the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade over the past ten years, compared ...
Scientists discovered unusually high water-vapor supersaturation inside deep tropical clouds, creating conditions in which tiny aerosol particles could intensify storm updrafts. The finding suggests earlier studies may have missed the effect because ...
A new chemical process can transform three of the most common plastics into high-purity hydrogen without sorting them first. The technique operates at much lower temperatures than traditional ...
Bumblebees naturally have short lives, but extreme heat and human activity are making survival harder. Pesticides can poison bees or destroy the flowers they depend on, while habitat loss leaves them with fewer safe places to live and feed. ...
Giant sequoias are built to withstand ordinary fires, but recent extreme wildfires killed thousands of trees that had survived for centuries or even millennia. A new analysis of about 26,400 sequoias found that trees in areas treated with prescribed ...
A notorious snake invasion that devastated Guam’s native birds may have succeeded because the reptiles carried hidden genetic advantages. Using advanced long-read DNA sequencing, researchers uncovered more than 19,000 large genetic differences in ...
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 ...

Latest Environment Headlines

updated 9:02am EDT

Society/Education News

August 26, 2026

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 ...
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 ...
For nearly 700 years, Indigenous hunters repeatedly used a bison kill site in central Montana—then suddenly stopped, even though bison were still abundant. Researchers uncovered evidence that ...
Scientists have successfully tested an AI-designed universal coronavirus vaccine in humans for the first time, finding it to be safe and well tolerated. The vaccine generated immune responses against multiple coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, ...
Using cannabis edibles and alcohol together may make drivers far more impaired than either substance alone, according to new research from Johns Hopkins. Even more concerning, common field sobriety tests often failed to detect the cannabis-related ...
Scientists have created a global “treasure map” for rare earth elements by uncovering where the strange volcanic rocks that contain them are most likely to form. By combining thousands of rock ...
Scientists in Canada have discovered that ancient underground rocks are naturally producing hydrogen gas — and lots of it. Measurements from mine boreholes in Ontario show the gas can flow continuously for years, offering a potential new source of ...
Scientists analyzing the genomes of thousands of people across Japan discovered evidence for a previously overlooked third ancestral group, challenging the long-accepted “dual origins” theory. The newly identified ancestry appears linked to the ...

Latest Society/Education Headlines

updated 9:02am EDT