New research suggests that dark matter, the universe’s most puzzling and mysterious substance, may not exist. But removing dark matter from our cosmological models could hinge on the possibility that gravity behaves differently on very large scales, one scientist says. Dark matter has been a thorn in the side of physicists because, despite outweighing ordinary
A brief, high-energy signal recorded last year has become a focal point in astrophysics. The event, lasting ten seconds, came from a time when the universe was only a fraction of its current age. It has now been confirmed as the most distant supernova observed to date. The signal’s exceptional distance, traced back more than
Jupiter hasn’t shrunk, but our best measurement of it just did. Using fresh data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, scientists say the solar system’s largest planet is slightly smaller and squatter than decades-old estimates suggested, reports Smithsonian Magazine. The revised dimensions, published in Nature Astronomy, trim roughly 15 miles off Jupiter’s polar height and about
A long-standing boundary in organic chemistry has just been crossed. At the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers have synthesized a class of molecules that had, until now, remained a theoretical impossibility. Their creation marks a turning point in how chemists think about structural constraints at the molecular level. The focus is a rare class
Surprisingly, a toxic compound found on Mars could help bacteria produce brick-like substances that could be used to assemble habitats on the Red Planet. In 2025, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science showed how the bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii, which is commonly found in Earth soils, could help create bricks out of regolith on the
The “Flaming Star Nebula” captured by astrophotographer Greg Meyer. (Image credit: Greg Meyer) Astrophotographer Greg Meyer has captured a magnificent view of the Flaming Star Nebula blazing in the night sky some 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Auriga, the Charioteer. Meyer’s image appears to show a maelstrom of fire leaping away from the
Bell, P. R. Standardized terminology and potential taxonomic utility for hadrosaurid skin impressions: a case study for Saurolophus from Canada and Mongolia. PLoS ONE 7, e31295 (2012). Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar Bell, P. R. in Hadrosaurs (eds Eberth, D. A. & Evans, D. C.) 572–590 (Indiana Univ. Press, 2014). Langston, W. Jr.
In 2022, a mysterious Archaeopteryx fossil was uncovered at the Field Museum in Chicago, revealing an incredible feature that had never been seen before in the fossil record. The discovery, which took over a year to prepare, has provided scientists with new insight into the evolution of one of the first flying bird-like dinosaurs. By
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ) was designed to look back in time and study galaxies that existed shortly after the Big Bang. In so doing, scientists hoped to gain a better understanding of how the Universe has evolved from the earliest cosmological epoch to the present. When Webb first trained its advanced optics
A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited, with the potential to be a spectacular sight in early April. C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was spotted by a team of four amateur astronomers with a remotely operated telescope in the Atacama desert on January 13. It quickly became apparent the newly discovered object was a member of a