News without the noise
Science news: discoveries, health, climate and space, from the journals and the labs, explained plainly.
742 articles · page 2 of 16 · The Science front page
A mathematical analysis published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A has identified what researchers describe as a fundamental instability in the standard model of the expanding universe, raising questions about whether dark energy is needed to explain cosmic acceleration.
A new study suggests that the Sun’s spicules, spike-like geysers of plasma, may not be individual jets but an optical illusion created by complex three-dimensional curtains of plasma, while also identifying giant plasma tornadoes that could help explain why the corona is much hotter than the surface.
Astronomers have spotted a dead star surrounded by a debris disk split into two distinct rings, a configuration they believe was shaped by two planetary bodies that partly survived the star’s violent transformation and a possible preview of the solar system’s fate billions of years from now.
A contested federal move to widen access to unproven peptides led the day's health news, joined by an Ebola case in Nigeria, a major CTE study and new research on targeted cancer therapy. The items span drug policy, outbreak response and biomedical science.
· 9 sources
Ars Technica reports that Musk and Shotwell cleared a path for SpaceX to contracts at NASA and the US military.
Rare letters written by a scientist who perished on the ill-fated La Pérouse expedition have been discovered hidden in a book of engravings, offering a new and personal account of the voyage that Louis XVI reportedly asked about as he prepared for execution in 1793.
· 2 sources
Estonia is set to become the first country in the world to invite citizens to screening programs based on genetic data. Starting next week, every 40-year-old woman in the country will receive an invitation for genetic testing to assess her individual risk of developing breast cancer, regardless of health insurance status. Smit said earlier screening, starting mammography at 40, would be justified for women whose risk is the same as that of women aged 50.
Hundreds of NHS GP practice websites in England and Wales have become unavailable after Silicon Practice, the tech company that ran their digital services, entered administration. The firm's parent company, Schappit Ltd, filed a notice of administration earlier this month following financial difficulties.
· 2 sources
MIT researchers report that pairs of tiny magnets implanted in muscles can offer more accurate and stable control signals than standard electrode-based measurements. In a study published today in Nature Sensors, three people with below-knee amputations used the technique, known as magnetomicrometry, to move a cursor on a screen.
A new study published in Nature Medicine found that colon cancer tumors in younger patients have distinct cellular characteristics; its co-senior author said younger patients generally have more aggressive disease and are more resistant to standard therapies, mostly chemotherapy.
Police in Wales will use DNA testing to help identify dogs that have attacked livestock, following a change in the law in March that gives officers the power to take DNA samples. Owners can receive an unlimited fine if their pets have been involved in attacks. Farmers have also been given testing kits as part of a research project to improve evidence gathering.
· 3 sources
The Extern-run needle exchange on Royal Avenue in Belfast city centre will close on 2 November, with a “significantly reduced street-based service” replacing it. The service allows people who inject heroin or cocaine to safely dispose of used needles, receive clean needles and access health services; it also provided a wound-dressing service. Extern described it as a “life-saving service” and warned its closure meant vulnerable people would have nowhere to go to access support.
· 2 sources
Chemical contamination at the former RAF Upper Heyford, a site earmarked for 9,000 homes, is the worst found in the UK, a report has said, with testing recording “unacceptable” levels of PFAS “forever chemicals”.
Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) will review the nation’s water fluoridation guidelines, as new studies linking prenatal fluoride exposure to lower intelligence in children reignite debate, its acting chief executive told a Senate hearing on Thursday.
· 3 sources
Scientists have found that molten rock deep inside Earth can absorb far more oxygen than previously believed, a discovery that challenges a long-standing assumption about magma and raises the possibility that oxygen from the planet's interior helped transform its atmosphere billions of years ago.
Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA, will expand aerospace research, hands-on training and innovation with $27.5 million in gifts from philanthropists Foster and Coco Stanback.
Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II lunar flyby mission and a former NASA chief astronaut, has been appointed associate vice president at Caltech and deputy director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He begins his new role on Nov. 30, 2026.
· 2 sources
The number of women who died in Scotland last year from alcohol-related illnesses rose by 3% on the year before, according to official figures, even as the overall number of alcohol-specific deaths fell to its lowest rate since the pandemic. In total, 1,152 alcohol-specific deaths were registered in Scotland, a decrease of 3% compared with 2024.
· 2 sources
Oregon is experiencing four times as many days with both extreme heat and wildfire smoke as it did two decades ago, according to a study released by the Oregon Health Authority, with the state recording nine heat-related deaths in 2025 alone.
At least 300,000 people in parts of the Himalayan region could be living in the path of potential disasters, according to a new study published in Scientific Reports. The research found that built-up land in high-risk zones in northern Nepal, parts of south-eastern Tibet and a corner of India's Uttarakhand grew about 45% between 2016 and 2023, and almost 78% in areas particularly threatened by glacial lake floods. The study was carried out before August's devastating floods, which left more than 1,400 dead and thousands missing in Nepal. More recently, flooding along the Budhi Gandaki river on 11 October damaged 200 houses and swept away five bridges. Settlements within 15 metres of the riverbank along the Rasuwa-Bhotekoshi corridor will soon be banned, according to Nepal's national disaster agency, while Uttarakhand's government approved new floodplain zoning rules on 12 October.
· 4 sources
United Launch Alliance announced Wednesday it plans to return its Vulcan rocket to flight on November 13, nine months after a solid rocket booster anomaly led to a stand-down, with a mission to carry 40 satellites for Amazon's Leo broadband constellation from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The launch date is pending range approval.
· 4 sources
Archaeologists have recovered a well-preserved bronze sword from Lake Mezzano, a volcanic lake northwest of Rome, that has maintained its sharp edge after 3,300 years. Dating to the Late Bronze Age (14th–13th centuries BC), the sword is the third such find in the lake over the past 50 years.
Scientists at the University of Helsinki, in collaboration with the Public University of Navarre and the University of Michigan, have demonstrated a prototype ultrasonic tube that can confine and guide liquids, gases, powders and even electrical discharges through the air using nothing but sound waves. The device, described as the closest thing to magic by the project leader, could eventually enable contactless handling of corrosive or sticky materials that damage conventional pipes.
A Boston University study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open estimates that nearly three-quarters of NFL players who died between 2008 and 2023 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head.
· 2 sourcesA new study from the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT has uncovered one of the main mechanisms by which the APOE4 gene variant, the biggest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's disease, impairs brain circuit function. The research, published Oct. 15 in Cell Stem Cell, shows that APOE4 suppresses Wnt signaling in oligodendrocytes, the cells that insulate neurons with a fatty sheath called myelin. This disrupts myelination and causes lipid droplets to accumulate in the cells. By restoring Wnt signaling, the team was able to reverse the damage in both human cell cultures and in mice.
Researchers in the lab of MIT professor Jonathan Weissman have followed the family history of more than a million cells as a mouse embryo developed, producing one of the most detailed views yet of how a mammal is built, cell by cell. The open-access study, published Oct. 8 in the journal Cell, offers a timeline of how a single fertilized egg gives rise to the many cell types that form an animal's tissues and organs.
NASA has completed integration of the Space Launch System core stage with the twin solid rocket boosters for the Artemis III mission, moving the rocket one step closer to launch. The 212-foot core stage was lifted into place inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on October 28.
NASA has selected 19 new citizen science proposals that will put volunteers to work on tasks ranging from hunting free-floating planets to listening to plasma waves and mapping iron on the Moon. Twelve of the projects were chosen through the agency's Citizen Science Seed Funding Program, which supports scientists who want to build volunteer participation into their investigations.
A long-standing hypothesis for the origin of life on Earth has been challenged by a new study finding that successful cometary delivery of prebiotic chemicals was highly unlikely.
· 2 sourcesA study published in Science Advances finds that smoke from the Eaton Fire, which tore through Altadena on 7 January 2025, carried airborne lead roughly 80 times above normal atmospheric levels, exposing about 7 million Los Angeles residents to concentrations above 50 nanograms per cubic meter on 9 January. Led by atmospheric chemists Haroula Baliaka and Nga Ng at the California Institute of Technology, the research attributes the toxic load to the urban fuel burned: homes, vehicles and infrastructure rather than vegetation.
A Victorian coroner has recommended the Therapeutic Goods Administration review the benefits and safety risks of unapproved peptides after actor Richard Norton’s death.
· 4 sources
The number of whales migrating along Western Australia's coastline is at its lowest in decades, with researchers linking the decline to warming seas, shrinking krill numbers and a rise in whale carcasses washing up on Perth beaches over the past month, prompting shark warnings from authorities.
· 3 sourcesBush Heritage Australia is seeking to buy Wooroora, a 20,000-hectare cattle station on the edge of Far North Queensland's World Heritage-listed wet tropics, in a $24.7 million acquisition that would anchor a 429,000-hectare conservation corridor. The group is trying to raise $5.3 million to secure the property.
· 4 sourcesEngineers at MIT have created a soft robotic enteroscope that can inch through the narrow, hard-to-reach small intestine, enabling imaging, drug delivery, and biopsies of polyps or tissue samples. The device, described in a study published in Science Robotics, takes inspiration from snake locomotion and the textured scales that help snakes grip slippery surfaces.
Astronomers have announced the first dwarf planet candidate discovered by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, an icy world designated 2026 ED138 that orbits the Sun at about 46 astronomical units, just beyond Pluto. The object was pieced together from 30 detections captured by the observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope over 20 nights between March and July this year, combined with archival images from the Dark Energy Camera dating back to 2016, giving researchers roughly a decade of data to reconstruct its orbit.
· 4 sourcesThe James Webb Space Telescope has released a new image of N159, a turbulent star-forming region 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
Scientists have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown volcanic system that formed roughly 100 million years ago in what is now northwestern Iran, a discovery that reveals a missing chapter in the region's geological history and offers new clues about the tectonic forces that shaped ancient oceans and continents.
Scientists in South Korea say they have found a way to extend the life of anode-free electric vehicle batteries, one of the biggest barriers to their commercial use. By adapting precision manufacturing techniques from the semiconductor industry, the KAIST-led team says lithium can be made to accumulate more evenly during charging, potentially leading to smaller, lighter EV batteries with longer driving range.
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered that age-related muscle weakness is partly driven by a hidden defence mechanism, where muscles trade strength for cellular protection. The study identifies a molecule called cardiolipin whose decline triggers this trade-off, and shows that partially restoring it in mice reverses muscle wasting and prevents premature death.
Fire salamanders, among Europe's most recognizable amphibians, possess an unexpected ability to fluoresce under ultraviolet light, glowing in vivid green and cyan, new research has found. The glow is most pronounced on the yellow underside and along the sides, and comes from glands in the skin whose secretions can remain fluorescent for more than 24 hours after leaving the animal's body.
Radiation levels near the Moon are higher than in low Earth orbit but not as dramatically as previously assumed, according to preliminary measurements from NASA's Artemis I mission, published by Polish researchers in the journal Radiation Measurements.
A new computer model from researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory predicts that Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier could raise global sea levels by as much as 30 millimeters by 2100, double earlier projections, even without additional warming of the climate. The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest previous models underestimated the glacier's retreat because they treated the boundary between grounded and floating ice too narrowly.
Hospital overcrowding in Ireland has reached its highest level recorded this year, with 824 patients waiting for a bed on Tuesday, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO). The Health Service Executive (HSE) reported a lower figure of 599 patients waiting.
A layer of water that shields the deep ocean from surface heat has been turning saltier, denser and sitting deeper since Antarctic sea ice began its sharp decline in 2016, according to research published Wednesday. The reversal of a decades-long freshening trend could allow more heat to reach deeper waters, with consequences for the world's climate that scientists say are unknown.
· 3 sources
Eli Lilly says patients taking its experimental obesity drug retatrutide lost roughly twice as much weight as those on Novo Nordisk's Ozempic in the first head-to-head trial of the two drugs, results announced on Wednesday alongside plans to seek US approval in early 2027.
Researchers at McMaster University in Canada have launched a free artificial intelligence model called ESKAPE that predicts which chemical compounds could kill dangerous bacteria, aiming to accelerate the discovery of new antibiotics amid rising drug-resistant infections.
A nurse has been killed and a health worker severely injured in an attack while responding to an Ebola alert in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Tshopo province, as the country's largest ever outbreak passed 10,000 confirmed cases. African health ministers are due to hold a virtual summit on Wednesday aimed at strengthening the continent's collective response.
· 3 sources
Scientists at McGill University have discovered that T cells can detect how stiff their surrounding tissues are and use that physical information to influence whether they develop into long-lasting memory cells, a finding published in Nature Immunology that challenges long-held assumptions about how the body builds lasting protection against infections.