Deep Nullarbor caves slowly collapsed and left shallow trenches behind, clues that may help geologists spot buried caves, maybe even on Mars.
Mysterious trenches in Australia may reveal hidden caves on Mars
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A study finds 26% of people classified with a normal BMI meet the new definition of "clinical obesity," based on waist size and existing health damage.
Half of overweight Americans are actually obese under new waist-based rules
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Paper2Agent turns research papers into AI agents that run each study's own code, and three of them helped flag a likely psoriasis gene.
Research papers can now become AI agents that answer questions
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Ants branched into thousands of new species after the dinosaurs died, and a new study links that burst to jumping genes in their DNA.
Jumping genes may explain how ants became so diverse after dinosaurs died
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Zircon crystals reveal that a meteor struck Oklahoma nearly 100 million years later than believed, around the time of a major mass extinction.
Oklahoma meteor crater formed nearly 100 million years later than scientists thought
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Webb observations reveal how violent collisions between young planetary bodies create distinct dust signatures as rocky worlds take shape.
Webb reveals the violent collisions that help build rocky planets
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A study tracked one cotton T-shirt from mill to landfill and found 44 percent of its fiber was wasted before it reached a store.
Researchers followed one cotton T-shirt around the world and found most of it never became clothing
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In flight tests, a lean-burn engine cut soot about a thousandfold, but tinier exhaust particles that can seed contrails stayed about the same.
New jet engines can produce 1,000 times less soot
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Ancient Roman bookshops reveal how books were written, copied, sold and corrected, tracing the evolution of writing from clay to papyrus.
You think bookshops are modern? Romans were already buying books and calling out errors from transcription copies over 2,000 years ago
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Weak molecular connections allow protein building blocks to separate, try again, and eventually lock into the stable structure of a virus-like shell.
Scientists watched a virus-like shell assemble itself in real time
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People with more chronic inflammation had smaller heart chambers and more heart attacks and strokes over about 15 years of follow-up.
Chronic inflammation may quietly reshape the heart over time
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The same objects can trigger different pupil responses depending on whether people judge qualities such as glossiness or attractiveness.
Your pupils respond differently depending on what you’re judging
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Indonesia’s peatlands are drying out as El Niño strengthens, allowing fires to smolder underground and produce enormous amounts of hazardous smoke.
Fires are burning underground across Indonesia as El Niño strengthens
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Network stability often improves when a system's parts differ, but only inside a narrow band, and a big enough mismatch destabilizes it.
Order in the chaos: Random differences can make complex systems more stable
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New research reveals how genetic isolation, continued hunting, and shrinking grazing habitat combined to drive Scandinavia’s aurochs toward extinction.
Aurochs survived for thousands of years as the world changed around them
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Antarctic ice loss is likely to continue through 2100 even with deep emissions cuts, but future emissions can still determine how much ice is lost.
Antarctica will keep losing ice throughout this century, even if emissions are cut
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Hubble reveals a vast cosmic bubble where massive stars cleared away gas, only for the compressed material around it to begin forming thousands of new stars.
Exploding stars carved a giant hole that is now making new stars
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If Earth instantly stopped spinning, the physics of a car crash would happen on a planetary scale.
What would happen if Earth suddenly stopped spinning? The answer is worse than you think
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Of 1,357 AI devices the FDA has cleared for use in patient care, three were tested on whether patients lived longer or better.
Medical AI is already in hospitals, but most of the devices haven’t been properly tested
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A neutron star collision produced an unusual nine-minute X-ray glow, possibly powered by a newborn magnetar that kept releasing energy after the blast.
Neutron star collision may have created a powerful newborn magnetar
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A doctor who has lived 36 years as a cancer patient explains why "How are you?" is hard to answer, and which words from a clinician help or harm.
Years as a cancer patient changed how one doctor thinks about the question “How are you?”
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None of 200-plus AI vision models matched how people use an object's overall shape to recognize its identity.
AI can identify objects in photos, but they have a surprising weakness
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Ancient DNA from 135 people in far western China shows Yellow River farmers and northern herders mixed long before the Silk Road.
People from East and West were mixing long before the Silk Road
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Animals experience the world in surprising ways humans cannot, a difference at the heart of this year’s World Animal Day theme.
World Animal Day 2026 asks us to see the world through animals’ eyes
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Fitbit data on 5,515 kids linked more daily steps to better mental health a year later, with no plateau up to 12,000 or more steps a day.
Taking more steps today may mean better mental health a year later
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Drought is increasingly affecting Swiss mountain forests at every elevation, potentially weakening their protection against natural hazards.
Altitude once spared forests above mountain towns from drought – that advantage is fading
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When a panther chameleon meets a rival, its rapid color change isn't a simple pigment trick. A complex biological process sits behind this transformation.
Panther chameleons have tiny crystals in their skin that help them rapidly change their body colors
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Maui adults carrying the most toxic metals were more likely to have abnormal breathing tests, and the pattern extended beyond Lahaina.
Toxic metals lingered in Maui residents long after the wildfires
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A review of 21 clinical trials found cancer patients who were in structured exercise programs had a lower risk of dying and of the cancer returning.
Exercise eases the side effects of cancer treatment, but can it help patients live longer?
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Wild harlequin frogs in Panama mostly survive where weather is wrong for a deadly fungus, and a new map shows where captive frogs might go.
Endangered harlequin frogs may have found refuge in Panama from a deadly fungus
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