The latest stories in science, brought to you by the @ScienceMagazine news team.
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How much space junk is too much? A recent preprint suggests that swarms of satellites may reach a threshold known as Kessler syndrome.
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Iberian harvester ants are the only known organism that propagates two species by itself, according to research from 2025.
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ALT Ant queen lays eggs that hatch into two species Bizarre discovery of interspecies cloning “almost impossible to believe,” biologists say
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The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has turned down Spain’s €1 billion offer to build the observatory on the island of La Palma, according to a statement from the Astrophysics Institute of the Canaries.
More than a decade ago, the U.S.-led TMT project tried to start construction at its preferred site, Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, but opposition from Native Hawaiians who hold the mountain sacred stalled the project.
With the rejection of La Palma, the TMT’s longtime backup site, the project is running out of options.
Learn more: scim.ag/4iEdIaR
ALT Giant telescope project rejects La Palma as backup site U.S.-led Thirty Meter Telescope declines €1 billion Spanish offer to build the observatory on the Canary Islands
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Monkeys at the Oregon National Primate Research Center were exposed to wildfire smoke in 2020.
None of the animals showed signs of immediate harm. But years later, a new study shows, the now-adolescent rhesus macaques have signs of lasting immune changes and DNA modifications that suggest accelerated aging. scim.ag/4yPVnMJ
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In June, researchers used the world’s most powerful laser to create a particle beam, which they sent blasting through a concrete wall and into a black van. The exercise produced a new sort of photograph—one that doesn’t rely on light at all.
After processing the data, the team has now released images: a shadow of a pile of lead blocks perched between the wall and the van.
For the first time, the researchers showed the images were created almost entirely by muons, high energy particles produced by the laser, they reported in a preprint.
Such on-demand muon beams could eventually be used to reveal objects that light cannot penetrate, from subsurface archaeological structures to concealed nuclear materials shipped across borders. Learn more: scim.ag/4jpuHxT
ALT Laser-generated particles allow scientists to see through walls First clean pictures from a muon beam point to a new way to peer inside suspicious packages and ancient structures
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Japan’s national science academy will receive far more governmental scrutiny starting next week, a move critics say will erode the autonomy of a body meant to look out for the interests of scientists and provide independent advice to the country. scim.ag/46FNhKL
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Eat your heart out, Victor Frankenstein.
In 2024, researchers succeeded in creating living machines made from electronic parts and living fungi.
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The National Institutes of Health has unveiled a new tool meant to help biomedical researchers search the scientific literature and learn whether a finding has been replicated by other groups. scim.ag/47jgHyo
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The first insects had way more than six legs, according to a recent study.
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President Donald Trump’s budget chief, Russell Vought, has reportedly floated a proposal in which he would have a final vote on all National Institutes of Health grants. scim.ag/3SXbI39
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This so-called fire amoeba may survive in volcanic lakes thanks to a static blanket that shields its proteins from the heat. scim.ag/3V0KXLP
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In 2017, scientists began to hear reports of a dolphin doing something unusual off the east coast of Australia.
While foraging for food, the animal—named Bubbles by locals—wouldn’t eat any of the fish he was pursuing. Instead, he would single out one, chase it until it threw up, then eat the vomit.
The surprising behavior, known as kleptoparasitism, marks one of the few well-documented examples of a cetacean stealing food.
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The CD1 system responds to lipids, not proteins, driving reactions to bee stings, bacteria, and possibly poison ivy. #LongReads scim.ag/4yVgtcA
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A new initiative promises an Amazon-wide, regularly updated picture of what’s happening to plant and animal populations as development threatens one of the most species-rich parts of the world.
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ALT Project will harness technology to track Amazon biodiversity in real time
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A new generation of radiotherapies promises a more targeted attack on cancer.
Learn more on #WorldCancerResearchDay: scim.ag/3KGrg6K
ALT An illustration shows how antibodies, peptides, and other molecules can be used to target the radioisotope to a specific type of cancer cell, which it kills by damaging its DNA. Alpha particle emitters affect a smaller number of cells (5 to 10 per particle) but do more damage, causing double-strand DNA breaks, whereas beta emitter particles affect a wider area (75 to 100 cells per particle) but cause only single-strand DNA breaks.
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The massive, T-shaped limestone pillars at southern Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe are one of the world’s oldest monumental temple complexes—and a focus of grisly speculation.
Hundreds of bone and skull fragments have been found in the rubble surrounding the complex, leading early excavators to suggest the famed 10,000-year-old site was once home to an ancient hunter-gatherer “skull cult,” or that the hilltop structures might have been a temple where people left their deceased to be picked apart by birds.
Now, a new analysis of the first intact burials from Göbekli Tepe offers a less lurid explanation: Landslides may have swept human remains into the site, jumbled together with debris from collapsed structures.
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ALT Bones link 10,000-year-old temple complex to a village, not a ‘skull cult’ Landslides, not rituals, may have scattered skulls and bones at Turkey’s famed Göbekli Tepe site
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Can the new cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) models feel pain? They at least behave as if they do, according to a recent study.
By peering inside 25 #AI models whose internal workings are publicly available, researchers found a pattern of activity specifically associated with the concept of pain. What’s more, when given the opportunity, some AIs switched off the pattern as a form of “pain relief.”
The work, which has not been peer reviewed, has divided AI researchers. Learn more: scim.ag/4xGaVSc
ALT Can an AI feel pain? It can at least act like it does Study reignites debate over what, if anything, machines can feel
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The Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite is exposing humans’ effects on rivers—and challenging flood prediction models.
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ALT Satellite reveals a world of ‘weird rivers’ shaped by humans
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Alzheimer's disease has long been seen as a tale of two proteins: beta amyloid, which forms sticky plaques in the brain, and tau, which in its diseased state creates tangles inside neurons.
Antibodies that clear beta amyloid have been approved to treat Alzheimer's, but it was tau that made headlines earlier this year: Researchers shared results from a phase 2 trial testing diranersen, a drug developed by Biogen to lower the body's production of tau, in more than 400 patients with early-stage Alzheimer's.
On the study's main measure of cognition, participants getting diranersen saw as much as a 26% slowing of decline—about on par with the effect seen in earlier trials of approved antiamyloid drugs.
Although the presentation sparked enthusiasm, it also drew attention to puzzling aspects of the trial results. Patients taking the lowest of three possible doses saw the greatest benefit, which caused the trial to fall short of the dose-dependent effect the investigators had chosen as its primary endpoint. And some people in the higher dose groups experienced a potentially worrisome side effect—a “confusional state” lasting up to a week after diranersen was administered.
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ALT Alzheimer’s trial results lend momentum to strategies targeting tau
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Researchers suggest our ancient relatives intentionally crafted these 1.4-million-year-old spheres, perhaps for the sheer joy of creating symmetry.
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ALT Were these stone balls made by ancient human relatives trying to perfect the sphere?
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