Science news: research breakthroughs and discoveries across physics, biology, and medicine.
CRISPR gene editing did not spring from nowhere. Two new studies published in Science trace the origin of CRISPR-Cas systems back billions of years to a much simpler RNA-guided defense system that evolved inside viruses themselves, before bacteria ever adapted…
Two years ago, something slammed into the moon hard enough to leave a crater the size of a city block, and nobody noticed. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now confirmed the aftermath: the biggest fresh impact crater known anywhere in…
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft may have caught Pluto doing something nobody expected: letting liquid ooze across its surface. A new study led by the Southwest Research Institute finds dark markings on Pluto’s giant heart-shaped glacier that look a lot like…
Dinosaurs’ origin story just got a rewrite. A newly described 240-million-year-old species from Tanzania suggests that some of the oldest presumed dinosaur fossils in Africa are millions of years younger than believed – and that the first dinosaurs may have…
When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano exploded beneath the South Pacific in January 2022, it set off the most powerful atmospheric eruption ever recorded. Now scientists studying satellite data have uncovered something nobody expected: for more than a week afterward,…
Cookies made from plastic bottles sound like a joke – but a NASA-backed team of scientists has made them real. Researchers engineered a special type of yeast that can convert PET plastic and agricultural waste into edible, protein-rich ingredients, then…
Humans have been using mind-altering plants for far longer than recorded history. Archaeologists studying ancient human remains from Sulawesi, Indonesia, have found evidence that people were habitually chewing psychoactive betel nut as far back as 25,000 years ago — the…
One of North America’s most famous Ice Age predators has just lost its name — and its identity turned out to be far more interesting. The extinct “American cheetah,” long imagined as a faster, bigger cousin of the African cheetah,…
Bats have a strange superpower, and it is not echolocation. Some bats live for decades — extraordinarily long for their size — while rarely getting cancer. New research suggests they pull this off by combining two strategies: powerful immune defenses…
Britain’s towering Devil’s Arrows have kept their secret for four thousand years. Now, new research has revealed it: the three giant standing stones in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, were hauled at least 18 kilometers from Brimham Rocks — each one a…