Science

Two archaea grown in Japan have no nucleus, live on peptides and need a methane-making partner. They narrow how complex cells may have begun, but they rest on two strains from one well.

Swift's rescue was abandoned on Aug. 19, yet Swift stayed in orbit 62 more days, observing again from Aug. 26, while drag pulled it down. Here is what failed on LINK, why the fall sped up, and what astronomers lose.

The Energy Department's new label for helium comes with no stockpile, no export rule and no dollar amount in the notice. The squeeze falls on fabs, labs and MRI sites.

The USDA's dashboard counts 59 U.S. screwworm cases, one of them a hunter-harvested elk in Pecos County, Texas. Here is how the fly works and what to do.

MMX leaves Tanegashima at 04:41:03 JST Tuesday, 19:41:03 UTC Monday. The mission is a five-year chain of firsts, and the dates show where it can break.

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake off Kamchatka became a 9.9 alert across eastern Japan for eight minutes. The weather agency's own map shows how it was built.

Nikon disqualified the first-place Small World in Motion video over generative AI under a rule that never defines the term, 14 days after The Scientist reported it had called the same AI step compliant. Journals and Nikon's own software pages draw the line the contest did not.

OpenAI's 719 machine-made math papers come in three tiers of confidence, and Lean coverage swings from nine in 10 families in combinatorics to one in five in algebraic geometry. Here is what a "solved" headline actually means.

Two labs have made a thorium nucleus steer a laser on its own. Here is what that proves, why the "six times steadier" claim needs a footnote, and how far nuclear clocks remain from beating atomic ones.

Rot usually starts with moisture, a bruise or a cold snap, not bad luck. Extension services give specific temperatures for storing pumpkins so they last until Halloween.

The comparison is not in your head. Stink bugs and cilantro share an odor molecule, and the same chemistry helps explain why some people think the herb tastes like soap.

That big spider crossing the floor in September probably never lived outdoors. It is a male house spider out looking for a mate, and the experts disagree about whether you should put it outside.

Young oaks and beeches cling to brown, papery leaves straight through the snow. The mechanism is well understood; the purpose is still a genuine scientific argument.

The sun's path crosses the horizon at its steepest angle near the equinoxes and nearly flattens out near the solstices — and Chicago's sunrise-sunset data show just how much that speeds up, then stalls, the loss of daylight.

Winter turbulence isn't a myth: clear-air turbulence has intensified 41% since 1971, and the jet stream's widest temperature swings happen in the cold months.

The International Space Station loses altitude every day to atmospheric drag. Regular reboosts, some lasting just five minutes, are the only thing keeping it up.

Cruising-altitude air holds almost no moisture to begin with, and the engineering that makes a cabin breathable squeezes out most of what little is left.

A €50 million octopus farm in the Canary Islands never opened. The reasons, and the growing list of bans that followed it, show how fast the science on octopus sentience has moved.

Bridges are built to move — one New York span sits a full 12 feet lower in summer than winter. The metal gaps in the road are what keep that shift from cracking the structure.

A smoke alarm's test button only confirms the horn and wiring work, not whether its ionization or photoelectric sensor can still detect real smoke after a decade of dust, grease, and radioactive decay.