Science

A study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B has revealed that common cuttlefish can pass a test of delayed gratification—a benchmark of cognitive ability typically applied to children, primates, and birds. This research, led by behavioral ecologist Alexandra K. Schnell of the University of Cambridge, adds another layer to our understanding of cephalopod intelligence, and it’s forcing scientists …

The moment a creature dies, its DNA begins to break down. Half of it degrades every 521 years on average. By about 6.8 million years, even under ideal preservation conditions in cold, stable environments, every meaningful trace is gone. That’s a huge challenge when trying to understand our evolutionary history more deeply: Two-legged primates emerged 7 million years ago in …

On Aug. 1, 2025, the SpaceX Crew-11 astronaut mission launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, headed for the International Space Station (ISS), which sits in low Earth orbit (LEO) at around 260 miles (418 kilometers) above our planet. As its name suggests, Crew-11 is the 11th contracted crewed mission that SpaceX has flown to the ISS for NASA, …

A bright galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole that spews out cosmic radiation is pointing straight at us. Thankfully, the object, unimaginatively dubbed “PKS 1424+240,” is located roughly 7.4 billion light-years away and likely won’t pose much of a danger. But that hasn’t stopped a group of excited astronomers from renaming it: the “Eye of Sauron,” the symbol adopted …

There’s bad news for our hopes of habitable planets existing around TRAPPIST-1, with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finding no evidence for an Earth-like atmosphere on a third world orbiting the red dwarf. However, that still leaves four other planets in orbit around TRAPPIST-1 that could be habitable, with at least two or three of them in what is …

A biology team pitched their tents one night inside Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan National Park. While checking rocks near camp, the group lifted a flat slab and met a tiny brown scorpion, Scorpiops krachana, staring back with a startling array of eight bright eyes. Scorpiops krachan, a species new to science, was formally described and submitted for review on March 6, …

Imagine leaving Earth forever and boarding a spaceship designed to carry you and thousands of others on a one-way trip to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri — a journey that could take 400 years. This is the bold vision behind Chrysalis, a hypothetical spacecraft that could transport 2,400 people over 25 trillion miles (40 trillion kilometers) to the exoplanet …

Researchers think that members of the most recently identified “hominin” group (the Denisovans) mixed with early modern humans and passed along parts of their DNA. Evidence points to several separate interbreeding events, each leaving a genetic imprint that influenced the course of human history. In 2010, scientists released the first draft of the Neanderthal genome. Comparing it with modern human …

In February 2024, paleontologists from across the globe unveiled new and groundbreaking details about the Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, a marine reptile that roamed the Earth over 240 million years ago during the Middle Triassic period. This study, published in the Earth and Environmental Science: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, sheds new light on a reptile whose unusual features captivated …

New type of supernova detected as black hole causes star to explode  Reuters Why the death of this star is very, very strange  The Washington Post AI helps astronomers make a potentially major find — an exploding star being attacked by a black hole  Space A peculiar supernova prompts new theories about the cosmos  USA Today Star Trying to Swallow a Black Hole May …