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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

When someone is badly injured, doctors urgently need two facts: the patient's blood type, so that a transfusion is safe, and their hematocrit, the share of the blood made up of red blood cells, which reveals blood loss or anemia. Hospitals measure both with large machines that need electricity and trained staff, which are often unavailable in ambulances, disaster zones or remote clinics.

The ocean beneath Saturn's moon Enceladus lies under kilometers of ice, but some of its contents do reach the surface. Jets near the south pole spray out water vapor and icy particles, offering a way to investigate the hidden ocean without drilling down to it.

A shipwreck off the coast of Turkey is the oldest shipwreck in the world, our team of archaeologists believes. There's little left of the ship itself, but based on clues from its cargo—including pottery vessels—a research team I was part of has tentatively dated the wreck to around 2700–2400 B.C.

When a massive environmental disaster strikes, do societies simply collapse and disappear? Or do people find a way to adapt, rebuild and recover?

A new international study led by Lund University examines what happened to population levels after the Kikai-Akahoya volcanic eruption in prehistoric Japan. The results paint a more complex picture than what had previously been believed. The paper is published in the journal Science Advances.

Qubits, the quantum equivalent of digital bits, are fragile and prone to errors. That makes building reliable quantum computers extremely difficult. One fix has been to use traditional magic state distillation, which filters out flaws, but it is extremely resource-intensive.

Ever wonder what goes on inside the brain of a worm—how it processes information, responds to stimuli and perceives the world around it? Northeastern University researchers have opened up that can of worms, specifically the one containing C. elegans, a tiny roundworm that's one of the most extensively studied animals in biology.

When scientists talk about scavengers, you might imagine an animal sniffing out or stumbling across a carcass, eating as much as possible and slinking away.

As human activity has increased temperatures globally, determining the costs directly incurred by climate change is challenging. The effects of climate change on extreme weather events—such as hurricanes and heat waves—can be locally specific and variable, and observations and climate modeling might not accurately capture those effects.

Astronomers using China's FAST radio telescope have discovered a compact cloud of hydrogen with no visible stars or galaxy around it. This could be one of the strongest candidates yet for an isolated "dark galaxy," containing nearly 500,000 times the sun's mass in neutral hydrogen. The discovery paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 24.

With about 30 visual pigments, compared to just three in humans, mantis shrimp possess a visual system that remains a mystery. Researchers from ULiège and Humboldt University in Berlin have, for the first time, analyzed these pigments one by one and discovered that some detect red light that very few animals can perceive. This finding, published in Science Advances, has potential applications in optogenetics.

In a discovery that could offer a new way to control quantum properties in two-dimensional materials, researchers at Cornell have found that electrically sliding the layers of ultrathin graphene can switch the material between distinct magnetic states that persist even after the voltage is removed.

Poor access to health care, limited local influence over research priorities and an unequal distribution of scientific benefits are undermining public confidence in science, experts warn, following the release of a global trust survey.

New research from Michigan State University finds that popular music has gradually become less explicit about emotion and relationships—both across generations of artists and within artists' careers.

The strong El Niño currently under way in the Pacific Ocean raises the specter of marine heat waves and coral bleaching once again threatening Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef. And now new research has revealed the complex interplay of atmospheric patterns and weather systems thousands of kilometers apart that can combine in a recipe potentially fatal for coral reefs.

Alzheimer's disease is best known for its effects on memory and cognition, but the disease also involves changes in how brain cells produce and use energy. Mitochondria, the structures that supply much of a cell's energy, can become dysfunctional in Alzheimer's disease. At the same time, changes in blood flow and oxygen availability may place additional demands on brain tissue. Understanding how these processes interact could help researchers characterize metabolic changes that accompany the dis

Naming a chicken and describing its favorite habits is enough to make preschoolers choose poultry less often. This effect translates into verbal declarations and actual meal choices, but food preferences still most often win over empathy, according to a new paper by researchers from SWPS University.

What happens when political violence is presented as a justified response to threat or injustice coming from an out-group? A study by Ursula Daxecker, director at the Max Planck Institute for Politics and Social Science in Göttingen, and Neeraj Prasad of the University of Amsterdam, published in The Journal of Politics, finds that legitimizing violence can increase public approval of both violence and the parties involved in it. Among BJP supporters, the effect went even further: when violence w

Scientists have discovered a gene that determines whether Japanese snails develop shells that are left- or right-coiling—with implications for understanding the underlying handedness of our own bodies. The researchers from the University of Nottingham and Tohoku University studied wild Euhadra snails in Japan to understand what makes one snail a mirror image of another.

The European rabbit is a common sight in the British countryside today. Yet it was not always so. They are not native to the British Isles and are one of the most devastating invasive species.

A University of Missouri astronomer is leading a team of 130 researchers from 62 institutions—including NASA, the California Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Harvard University—on an ambitious mission to capture an unprecedented view of the early universe.

Plants begin responding to spaceflight almost immediately after leaving Earth, according to a new University of Florida study that captured the earliest stages of biological adaptation during a commercial suborbital mission. Published in the journal npj Microgravity, the study reports the results of an experiment conducted by a UF astronaut during Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-26 flight on Aug. 29, 2024.

How do young stars reshape the clouds from which they are born? A new high-resolution 3D model developed by an international team led by Dr Brandt Gaches from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows how the uneven structure of stellar nurseries creates shadows that alter their chemistry and influence the infrared emission observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The model has now been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Every time a tissue grows or renews itself, cells must divide inside an already crowded environment. That creates a fundamental problem that scientists have not fully understood: How does a tightly packed sheet of cells make room for two daughter cells when there was once only one?

Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and an online influencer with millions of followers, faces charges in several countries of allegedly causing physical harm, including rape and sex trafficking of women and girls.

Quantum computers represent a next step in the fast-paced evolution of technology. Using quantum bits (qubits), they have the potential to run certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers. However, developing and fine-tuning quantum computers requires an enormous number of repetitive tests. To accelerate quantum technology development, we need a method that can read quantum states at ultrafast speeds.

Australian researchers and international collaborators have demonstrated a solar-driven approach to convert glycerol, a low-value byproduct of biodiesel production, into hydrogen and higher-value chemicals. Using advanced techniques at the Australian Synchrotron, they revealed how the catalyst changed while it was working.

For the first time, scientists have achieved strong coupling between light and long-lived acoustic vibrations in an optical fiber. Optical fibers are used in both classical telecommunications and quantum communication and could serve not only as connections between computing nodes but also as quantum processors themselves in the future. The results, published in Nature Physics, pave the way for new technologies in quantum signal processing.

Researchers have developed and tested a new locking method for gravitational wave detectors that will advance the discovery of distant black holes and neutron stars colliding.

A Ph.D. student at the University of Sydney has produced the first comprehensive classification system and map of Martian soils, creating a new framework that could help scientists compare landscapes across the Red Planet and identify promising locations for future exploration, habitation and food production.

Researchers already know that humans have a tendency to use egocentric anchoring—a cognitive bias in which people use their own preferences, beliefs and perspectives as a mental starting point (or anchor) to understand or predict what another person thinks, feels or prefers. This is not necessarily a sign of selfishness or self-importance, but a way for us to better understand others.

A German cockroach races across a kitchen floor. Someone grabs a bottle of essential oil spray, soaks the insect and watches it die. The product worked, but a new University of Kentucky study suggests the larger infestation probably did not notice.

A new University of Melbourne-led study has identified insights and evidence that could help mitigate the fast-rising climate impact of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).

With the 2026 midterm elections around the corner, voters may be feeling everything from excitement to fear. But how might anger motivate political activism and, ultimately, influence who turns out to vote?

A Université de Montréal–led research team has analyzed the genetic origins of human remains found in Old Montreal—and uncovered unexpected results.

A plant's roots do much of their work out of sight, pulling in water and nutrients and holding the plant in place. That makes it hard to see how plants respond when conditions underground change, and how a warming climate affects them. New Dartmouth-led studies look at the strategies plants use below the surface to adapt and survive.