Fall stargazing 2026: The best skywatching sights in autumn (and how to see them)

As longer nights draw in over the fall, we see the return of some stargazing favorites, including the Andromeda Galaxy, the Pleiades star cluster and the first supermoon of the season.

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Haunting Hubble telescope image captures cosmic cycle of destruction and creation —‬ Space photo of the week

A spectacular new Hubble Space Telescope image reveals almost 30,000 newborn stars around an enormous cavity carved into a stellar nursery in a neighboring galaxy.

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Why do cats lick each other?

Cats lick each other for multiple reasons, and some are more mysterious than others.

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Scientists got diamond's melting point wrong by more than 1,000 degrees, crushing new laser experiment reveals

Scientists blasted diamonds with lasers to get the best measurement of the mineral's melting point yet. The new, more accurate numbers could help improve fusion experiments and studies of giant planets.

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AI trained to 'think' like human pathologists may be better at spotting cancer

Researchers trained AI on how expert pathologists look for signs of cancer in patient samples, improving the algorithm's effectiveness.

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Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ review

A sharp, wide-field and genuinely portable 130mm reflector whose phone-guided pointing makes star-hopping optional, offering stunning views of the solar system and brighter deep-sky objects.

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Why is Venus hotter than Mercury, when Mercury is closer to the sun?

Despite being farther from the sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, and the reason has little to do with proximity to a star.

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'Oddly shaped rock' unearthed in California turns out to be 'immaculate' mastodon molar

A field survey in San Mateo County, California, has revealed the fossilized tooth of an adult Pacific mastodon, an ice-age giant that was probably native to the West Coast.

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'There are no easy answers here': New study forecasts a dire dip in food production if key Atlantic currents collapse

Researchers have examined how weakening currents in the Atlantic Ocean could impact global agriculture — and the results are concerning.

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'Maybe that is how Transformers started': Readers react to the possibility of AI becoming self-aware

Could AI become conscious? Live Science readers revealed their thoughts about this technological possibility.

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Microscopic fragments of ancient alien tech may litter the moon — and scientists have a plan to find them

Researchers propose that tiny technological remnants left over from extinct alien civilizations could have landed on the moon after traveling through interstellar space. It may not take long to find them, the team claims.

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Brain shrinkage tied to aging 'pauses' as a woman nears menopause, study finds

A new study looked at gray matter in the brain during puberty, pregnancy and menopause, finding distinct changes at different life stages.

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Finland's largest Viking Age silver hoard discovered by metal detectorist — and it has thousands of coins and pieces of jewelry

The largest Viking Age silver hoard ever found in Finland was unearthed by a metal detectorist north of Helsinki.

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'Every time it gets excited — boom — it collapses': How dogs with narcolepsy helped scientists understand the disorder

Live Science spoke with **Dr. Emmanuel Mignot** , director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy and co-winner of a coveted Lasker Award.

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Infectious diseases will seed new ground as the planet warms — here's where they'll spread

Climate change will increase our exposure to myriad infections, from tick-borne diseases to drug-resistant bacterial infections.

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1 million people's genes reveal the heritability of the Big Five personality traits — and it's complicated

A huge analysis probes the genetics of personality, finding that the trait is much less straightforward than physical attributes like eye color.

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Mercury may have shrunk much more than we thought, new study hints

Mercury may be shrinking much faster than we thought — and that could reveal new clues about its violent origins.

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Powerful new AI model will map the moon's surface in more detail than ever, NASA and IBM scientists say

IBM and NASA have partnered to create the Lunar Foundation Model, a new AI capable of processing decades of lunar data so we can more accurately map the moon's surface.

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Canon RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM review: Wide, bright and built for the dark

With a bright f/1.4 aperture and wide field of view, this L-series prime lens is aimed at photographers who regularly shoot in low light

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A Harvest Moon with 5 planets on the side: September is the best month for stargazing, ‪and this year is extra special

Generally mild weather and increasing hours of darkness make September a great month for observing, and this year, there's a particularly busy sky.

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'America's Nobel' prizes go to sleep and hemophilia researchers, and to Michael J. Fox for Parkinson's advocacy

The Lasker Foundation has announced the winners of its 2026 awards for basic medical research, clinical science and public service.

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Watch the first-ever footage of a rare deep-sea squid in the northeastern Pacific

A rare sighting of a bigfin squid near an underwater mountain off California is the first confirmed live observation of the bizarre animal in the northeastern Pacific, researchers say.

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'Why would you ruin your career?': OpenAI claims to have cracked one of math's greatest unsolved problems, but mathematicians allege it played dirty

A breakthrough on the Navier-Stokes equations could be worth a $1 million prize, but a mathematician has serious questions about how OpenAI got there so fast.

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World's oldest evidence of habitual drug use traced back 25,000 years to Indonesia

Hunter-gatherers from the last ice age sucked on betel nuts to soothe their toothaches, a new study reveals.

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See the highest-resolution footage of a black hole jet ever taken, thanks to AI and 27 years of observations

Researchers combined 100-plus images of a single black hole into an AI-powered video to chart the activity of a mighty blazar's jet.

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Do you think Al could ever become self-aware?

A new study looks at "consciousness steering" in AI, but could this technology actually achieve this level of self-awareness in the first place?

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Enigmatic Denisovans lived by cave in what is now China for 100,000 years, rare fossils and handcrafted tools reveal

Anthropologists have discovered the first-ever Denisovan arm bone in a cave in southwest China, which also held thousands of prehistoric animal bones and stone tools.

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The moon may have formed in just 5 hours, new simulations suggest

Novel simulations, which reassessed the ancient collision between Earth and the protoplanet Theia, suggest that the moon could have emerged from the aftermath of this impact much more quickly than scientists previously thought.

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Diagnostic dilemma: Fisher's colon punctured by eel that snuck in through his rectum

A man's intestines were perforated in an "exceedingly rare" medical case involving a live eel.

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'Drops in the ocean can make waves': How the grassroots climate movement took off in the US

In this excerpt from "The Carbon Wave," author **Leah Stokes** explores the lead up to that moment, and the wave of environmental action that followed.

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