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February 10, 2026

- Sandals of Tutankhamun: 3,300-year-old footwear that let King Tut walk all over his enemies

- Viking Age mass grave holds mysterious mix of dismembered human remains and complete skeletons, including a 'giant' who'd had brain surgery

- Western Europe's earliest known mule died 2,700 years ago — and it was buried with a partially cremated woman

- Something supercharged Uranus with radiation during Voyager flyby 40 years ago. Scientists now know what.

- New 'sungrazing' comet could become visible to the naked eye during the day — if the sun doesn't destroy it

- Only certain types of brain-training exercises reduce dementia risk, large trial reveals

- 'There's no reason to ban us from playing': Analysis debunks notion that transgender women have inherent physical advantages in sports

- Scientists infiltrated volunteers' dreams to boost their creative thinking

- CT scans reveal the last moments of Inca children sacrificed as 'messengers to the gods'

- The largest reservoir of hydrogen on Earth may be hiding in its core

- Should you buy a new or used camera for astrophotography?

- Paleo-Inuit people braved icy seas to reach remote Greenland islands 4,500 years ago, archaeologists discover

- Microbes in Iceland are hoarding nitrogen, and that's mucking up the nutrient cycle

Sandals of Tutankhamun: 3,300-year-old footwear that let King Tut walk all over his enemies

Among the sandals discovered in Tut's tomb is a pair whose insoles were decorated with images of the boy king's enemies.

A pair of sandals depicting King Tut's enemies was found in his tomb. (Image credit: Khaled Desouki/Getty Images)

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When British archaeologist Howard Carter and local Egyptians excavated the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922, they found thousands of artifacts buried with the young pharaoh. These sandals were one of the dozens of pairs of footwear that carried Tut to the afterlife, but the depiction of defeated enemies on their insoles makes them unique.

According to Carter's original object card, these sandals measured 11.2 by 3.6 inches (28.4 by 9.2 centimeters), making them roughly a U.S. men's size 11.5 shoe (EU 45). Carter discovered them lying underneath a basket in the tomb. However, it was not clear if that was their original location, as many objects had been moved around and some were looted in antiquity.

The sandals were made of wood and covered with a veneer of bark, green leather and pieces of gold foil on top of a layer of white paint. In the arch area of each sandal, there are depictions of two people bound with lotus and papyrus. Each sandal also has eight bow weapons — four near the toes and four at the heel — as well as a strap in the shape of a bow. Together, these made up the Nine Bows, the collective symbol for the enemies of Egypt.

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The sandals are on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. An information card notes that the bound captives refer to King Tut's power and that the Nine Bows are "situated so that the king's feet step on them, reifying the trampling of Egypt's enemies by the monarch."

When his mummy was discovered, Tut was found to be wearing gleaming gold sandals and gold toe covers. It is unknown, though, whether King Tut ever wore any of the sandals discovered in his tomb during his life or if they were made specifically for his afterlife attire.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egyptians/sandals-of-tutankhamun-3-300-year-old-footwear-that-let-king-tut-walk-all-over-his-enemies at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Viking Age mass grave holds mysterious mix of dismembered human remains and complete skeletons, including a 'giant' who'd had brain surgery

Archaeologists and student excavators uncovered a Viking Age pit full of dismembered remains near Cambridge, England.

University of Cambridge archaeology students excavated a mass grave from the ninth century. (Image credit: David Matzliach, Cambridge Archaeological Unit / © University of Cambridge)

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Archaeologists have unearthed a Viking Age pit filled with the dismembered remains of 10 people in the outskirts of Cambridge, England. The unusual mass grave, which also contained the skeleton of an extremely tall man who had undergone brain surgery, may be related to ninth-century conflicts among the Saxons and the Vikings.

In the summer of 2025, a team of professional and student archaeologists excavated a pit during a training dig in Wandlebury Country Park, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) south of Cambridge. Previous archaeological excavation in the area revealed an Iron Age hillfort that was used in the second century. It was just outside the hillfort that the archaeologists discovered the 13-by-3.3-foot (4 by 1 meter) pit.

There, archaeologists discovered four complete human skeletons, a cluster of skulls without their bodies, and a stack of leg bones, all from young men, according to a Feb. 4 statement from the University of Cambridge. The combination of severed heads and limbs, along with evidence that some of the people had been tied up, suggests these people met violent ends, Oscar Aldred, an archaeologist in the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said in the statement. But the pit is also highly unusual in having both complete and dismembered remains.

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Five of the disarticulated heads that were discovered in the pit. (Image credit: David Matzliach, Cambridge Archaeological Unit / © University of Cambridge)

"It may be that some of the disarticulated body parts had previously been displayed as trophies and then were gathered up and interred with the executed or otherwise slaughtered individuals," Aldred said. The individual body parts "may have been in a state of decomposition and literally falling apart when they went into the pit," he added.

During the ninth century, the area that is now Cambridge was a kind of "frontier zone" in the wars between the Saxons and the Vikings, according to Aldred. One skeleton has been carbon-dated to between 772 and 891, so "we suspect the pit may relate to those conflicts," Aldred said.

But the lack of injuries associated with medieval combat means the men in the pit were likely not killed in battle. "Those buried could have been recipients of corporal punishment, and that may be connected to Wandlebury as a sacred or well-known meeting place," Aldred said.

"It was a sobering experience to identify ever more disarticulated bones and realise the extent of the suffering that had taken place," Grace Grandfield, a Cambridge undergraduate student who took part in the dig, said in the statement.

One of the skulls showed evidence of trepanation, an old form of cranial surgery. (Image credit: David Matzliach, Cambridge Archaeological Unit / © University of Cambridge)

A giant with a hole in his head

One particular skeleton discovered face down in the pit has given researchers insight into the individual's health issues.

The body of a man who was between 17 and 24 years old when he died revealed he may have stood around 6 feet, 5 inches (1.95 meters) — a massive height at a time when men averaged 5 feet, 6 inches (1.68 m). He also had a 1.2-inch (3 cm) oval hole in his skull, which may have been connected to his towering stature.

"The individual may have had a tumour that affected their pituitary gland and caused an excess of growth hormones," Trish Biers, an osteologist at the University of Cambridge, said in the statement.

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Pituitary gigantism is a condition characterized by the overproduction of growth hormone during adolescence and is usually caused by a benign tumor called an adenoma. The extra growth hormone causes children to grow extremely tall. This condition can strain the circulatory and skeletal systems, which must maintain a large, heavy body.

"Such a condition in the brain would have led to increased pressure in the skull, causing headaches," Biers said. This may have necessitated a form of brain surgery called trepanation, when a hole is drilled into or scraped out of the skull, exposing the brain's protective membranes.

The hole in the man's skull may have been an attempt to alleviate pressure on his brain, Biers said, which is "not uncommon with head trauma today."

The University of Cambridge Department of Archaeology and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit have conducted student training digs at Wandlebury for several years, but this is the first time human remains have turned up since 1976, according to the statement. The discovery was featured in a recent episode of BBC Two's "Digging for Britain."

Further scientific analysis is planned for the 10 skeletons. Experts aim to use DNA and chemical analysis techniques to investigate the people's health and ancestry. These results should also determine whether the deceased individuals were Vikings.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/vikings/viking-age-mass-grave-holds-mysterious-mix-of-dismembered-human-remains-and-complete-skeletons-including-a-giant-whod-had-brain-surgery at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Western Europe's earliest known mule died 2,700 years ago — and it was buried with a partially cremated woman

Scientists have identified the oldest mule remains ever found in the western Mediterranean.

Remains of the mule's skull from the 2,700-year-old burial in Spain. (Image credit: Image courtesy of F. Javier López Cachero; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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Around 2,700 years ago, a partially cremated woman was buried with a mule — the oldest remains of the hybrid animal ever found in Western Europe, a new study reveals.

The mule and woman were interred inside an ancient rock-lined pit that served as a silo at the archaeological site of Hort d'en Grimau in northeastern Spain. Although the skeletons were discovered in 1986, genetic testing recently identified one set of remains as a mule.

A mule is a hybrid offspring between a male donkey and a female horse. These animals "combine the physical strength and size of a horse with the hardiness and frugality of a donkey," the team wrote in a paper published in the February issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

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Mules are usually sterile, and getting a male donkey to breed with a horse is challenging. Ancient people who bred them had to train donkey stallions "from a young age to mount mares," the team wrote, noting that these difficulties made mules valuable throughout history.

The oldest mules on record date to more than 4,000 years ago and were found in the Middle East, F. Javier López Cachero, an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona and co-author of the paper, told Live Science in an email.

At the time this particular mule lived, seafaring people called the Phoenicians were active in Spain. They were based in the Middle East, and they may have brought their knowledge of how to breed a mule, the team noted in the paper.

The scientists examined the ratios of isotopes (atoms with varying numbers of neutrons in their nuclei) in the mule's remains, as these chemical remnants can provide clues about the food it ate. They found that the mule was fed a diet rich in cultivated cereals, while an anatomical analysis of its bones indicated that the mule was used extensively for riding.

The remains of the teeth and jaw of the mule that lived 2,700 years ago on the Iberian Peninsula. Scientists estimate that it was more than 8 years old when it died. (Image credit: Image courtesy of F. Javier López Cachero; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

"The mule shows clear evidence of having been ridden and well‑fed, suggesting that it held considerable social value," López Cachero said.

The woman buried with the mule was between 20 and 25 years old when she died, but little else is known about her.

"Unfortunately, the condition of the skeletal remains does not permit any assessment of the woman's health nor determination of her cause of death," López Cachero said. However, an analysis found that the woman had been partially cremated before her burial and that her remains were in pieces when they were put into the burial, rather than carefully laid out.

"The mule, however, shows no signs of cremation," he noted. "This remains a challenging question."

Horses in or near human burials sometimes indicated "warrior" status in the ancient world, but it's unclear why this woman was buried with a mule.

The "funerary treatment of the human remains is 'unconventional', and the absence of grave goods prevents any firm conclusions regarding the woman's social status," López Cachero said.

Article Sources

Albizuri, S., Nadal, J., Cuervo, M. M., Grandal-D’Anglade, A., Orlando, L., Fages, A., Mercadal, O., Mestre, J., Farré, J., & Cachero, J. L. (2025). The oldest mule in the western Mediterranean. The case of the Early Iron Age in Hort d’en Grimau (Penedès, Barcelona, Spain). Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, 69, 105506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.105506

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/western-europes-earliest-known-mule-died-2-700-years-ago-and-it-was-buried-with-a-partially-cremated-woman at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Something supercharged Uranus with radiation during Voyager flyby 40 years ago. Scientists now know what.

Forty years ago, Voyager 2 flew past Uranus and observed radiation levels that defied explanation. Now, scientists may finally know exactly what happened.

Two versions of Uranus images taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986. Scientists may finally know what triggered inexplicably high radiation signals that Voyager observed during its historic flyby. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

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Scientists may have solved a long-standing mystery surrounding Uranus' extraordinarily strong radiation belt.

A new analysis of Voyager 2 data suggests that a temporary space weather event may have made the planet's electron radiation belt more intense than usual as Voyager 2 was passing by. The findings could help to explain why the radiation belt was so much stronger than scientists had predicted it would be.

Radiation belts are formed from interactions between the solar wind and a planet's magnetic field. The sun emits a continuous stream of protons and electrons from its outer atmosphere, called the corona. For planets that have a global magnetic field, including Earth and Uranus, some of those energetic, charged particles get trapped in the magnetosphere.

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In January 1986, Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and measured the strength of its radiation belts. While the ion radiation belt was a little weaker than expected, the electron radiation belt was much more intense than scientists had predicted — close to the maximum intensity Uranus could sustain. Since then, scientists have tried to figure out how and why this was the case.

"Science has come a long way since the Voyager 2 flyby," Robert Allen, a space physicist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and coauthor of the new research, said in a statement. "We decided to take a comparative approach looking at the Voyager 2 data and compare it to Earth observations we've made in the decades since."

Earth versus Uranus

In the study, published in November 2025 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Allen and colleagues revisited data collected by Voyager 2 during its flyby of Uranus. They found several similarities between the Voyager data and the data collected from Earth orbit during a space weather event in 2019.

Uranus' unusually intense radiation belt may have been caused by a "co-rotating interaction region," the team found. A co-rotating interaction region occurs when high-speed solar winds overtake slower solar wind streams. The phenomenon could have accelerated electrons and added energy to the radiation belt, the researchers said.

An illustration of the solar storm that may have triggered the unusual magnetic activity spotted on Uranus during Voyager’s flyby. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

"In 2019, Earth experienced one of these events, which caused an immense amount of radiation belt electron acceleration," said study co-author Sarah Vines, a space physicist at SwRI. "If a similar mechanism interacted with the Uranian system, it would explain why Voyager 2 saw all this unexpected additional energy."

If that's the case, it raises many more questions about the physics of Uranus' magnetosphere and its interactions with the solar wind, including the radiation belt's stability during the extreme seasons caused by the planet's tilted axis of rotation. A spacecraft orbiting Uranus and collecting data from different parts of the magnetosphere could help address those questions, the researchers wrote in the study.

"This is just one more reason to send a mission targeting Uranus," Allen said in the statement. "The findings have some important implications for similar systems, such as Neptune's."

Article Sources

Allen, R. C., Vines, S. K., & Ho, G. C. (2025). Solving the mystery of the electron radiation belt at Uranus: leveraging knowledge of Earth’s radiation belts in a Re‐Examination of Voyager 2 observations. Geophysical Research Letters, 52(22). https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl119311

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/planets/something-supercharged-uranus-with-radiation-during-voyager-flyby-40-years-ago-scientists-now-know-what at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

New 'sungrazing' comet could become visible to the naked eye during the day — if the sun doesn't destroy it

The newly discovered sungrazing comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) will undergo an extremely close slingshot around our star in early April, and could become bright enough to be seen without a telescope during the day.

A newly discovered Kreutz sungrazer comet may shine brightly in early April. The last superbright member of this family was Comet Lovejoy (photographed), which flew close to the sun in 2011. (Image credit: Alan Dyer /VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

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Astronomers have discovered an exciting new "sungrazing" comet that will have a perilously close encounter with our home star in less than two months. Some experts predict the hefty ice ball could become bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, even in daylight — but only if the comet survives its deadly solar slingshot.

The newfound comet, dubbed C/2026 A1 (MAPS), was discovered Jan. 13 by a team of French astronomers at the AMACS1 Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert. It is likely around 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) wide and, when it was first spotted, was just over twice as far from the sun as Earth is, according to Sky & Telescope magazine.

C/2026 A1 belongs to the Kreutz family of "sungrazing" comets — a group of at least 3,500 comets with orbits that take them within 850,000 miles (1.4 million km) of our home star. The Kreutz sungrazers are suspected to be fragments of a single massive comet that was ripped apart by the sun around 1,700 years ago, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

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The icy ball of rock and gas will reach its closest point to the sun, called perihelion, on April 4, when it will come within around 500,000 miles (800,000 km) of our home star — or roughly 70 times closer to the sun than Mercury is. At such proximity, the comet will whip around the sun at more than 2 million mph (3.2 million km/h), causing it to experience intense gravitational pressure, high temperatures, and a hefty dose of solar radiation.

This immense strain may end up ripping the comet apart, which happens to most other sungrazing comets. But if it survives its perilous perihelion, C/2026 A1 will be so changed by the event that it will shine like an incredibly bright star — potentially even during the daytime.

How bright will it get?

C/2026 A1 comes from a particularly noteworthy subgroup of Kreutz sungrazers that are thought to be fragments of the "Great Comet of 1106," which was itself a remnant of the family's massive progenitor. Previous alumni of this subgroup include Comet Ikeya-Seki, which shined brighter than the full moon in 1965, and Comet Lovejoy, which became a "headless wonder" after being largely ripped apart in 2011.

As these comets made their own solar flybys, they became uncommonly bright, largely due to the significant amounts of gas that were released as they soaked up solar radiation. This has also caused several sungrazers to grow spectacular "broom-like" tails as they neared the sun, which could also happen to C/2026 A1, according to Sky & Telescope.

Researchers at the KAMACS1 Observatory, located in Chile's Atacama Desert, first spotted C/2026 A1 (MAPS) on Jan. 13. (Image credit: Denis Huber/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)

It is too early to accurately predict how bright C/2026 A1 will become. However, some researchers speculate that it could get several times brighter than the full moon, which would make it visible to the naked eye in the daytime sky, according to an article in The Conversation. But this will happen only if it survives perihelion; if not, it won't get anywhere near its max brightness.

Most sungrazing comets are small and are discovered mere days before they reach perihelion. Usually, they also get ripped apart by the encounter. For example, during the total solar eclipse of April 2024, researchers discovered a tiny sungrazer just hours before it disappeared forever.

How to see C/2026 A1 (MAPS)

If C/2026 A1 survives its deadly dance with the sun, it will likely reach its max brightness a few days later as it nears its closest point to Earth later in the month.

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C/2026 A1 will reach perihelion on April 4 and could become unusually bright if it survives its solar flyby. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Small-Body Database Lookup)

Observers in the Southern Hemisphere will get the best views of the comet, according to Sky & Telescope. However, people in the global north will still be able to see the object low above the southwestern horizon just before sunset.

But even if the comet falls apart, it will still be visible from late March with a decent telescope or pair of stargazing binoculars.

Later in April, another potentially spectacular comet, C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), could also become visible to the naked eye as it nears its own perihelion on April 20. This ice ball was previously (and perhaps prematurely) dubbed the "Great Comet of 2026."

Time will tell if C/2026 A1 can wrestle that title for itself.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/comets/new-sungrazing-comet-could-become-visible-to-the-naked-eye-during-the-day-if-the-sun-doesnt-destroy-it at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Only certain types of brain-training exercises reduce dementia risk, large trial reveals

A large, 20-year trial showed that speedy cognitive exercises could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. The question is, could these tasks be adapted into video games?

A long-term study found that only certain types of brain training were linked to lower dementia risk. (Image credit: Jose Luis Raota/Getty Images)

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Brain-training exercises may reduce the risk of dementia if they involve speedy thinking, whereas exercises involving memorization or reasoning have no effect on dementia risk, a two-decade-long trial suggests.

The finding could prompt researchers to design video games to help preserve users' cognitive function as they get older, some experts say.

As people age, their probability of developing Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia increases, and these conditions affect nearly half of people in their 80s and 90s, Art Kramer, a psychologist at Northeastern University who was not involved with the new study, told Live Science. There is currently no cure for these disorders, but researchers are exploring interventions to reduce the risk of dementia. Some available drugs can help slow cognitive decline in early stages of the disease, but they're far from silver bullets.

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Now, a trial that began in the late 1990s is pointing to non-pharmaceutical interventions that might help ward off dementia.

Weeks of training meant years of protection

At the study's start, 2,021 participants ages 65 and older enrolled in the long-term randomized controlled trial, whose results were published Feb. 9 in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia. These participants were split into four groups. One group performed speed-training exercises, which required them to divide their attention between two tasks at once. The other three groups completed memorization exercises in which they used mnemonics; reasoning exercises that involved spotting patterns and using them to solve problems; or no cognitive exercises at all, as a point of comparison.

Participants in the three training groups completed up to 10 60- to 75-minute-long sessions over five or six weeks. Some participants also returned for up to four 75-minute-long "booster" sessions one to three years later.

Twenty years after the study began, the trial runners determined that only the speed-training exercises were linked to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The effect was more pronounced in the booster group.

"If you were in the speed training group and you had the booster sessions, you had a 25% lower risk of having a diagnosis of dementia [by the end of the trial]," said study co-author Marilyn Albert, a neuroscientist at John Hopkins University. By comparison, dementia was just as common in the other two training groups as it was in the comparison group, suggesting the memory and reasoning tasks had no protective effect.

The trial results raise the question as to whether speed-training cognitive exercises, including certain brain-training video games or apps, could help guard against dementia.

"There are hundreds of those that exist in the marketplace" and claim to be designed to boost brain health, Kramer said. "When these things get commercial, sometimes people make claims that go beyond the data, so you always worry about that," he cautioned. But still, he argued that these games could theoretically achieve a similar effect to the speed-training cognitive exercises tested in the trial.

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Albert, meanwhile, is hesitant to suggest that video games could recapitulate the effects seen in this study.

"Speed-of-processing training isn't a whole lot of fun. It's hard," she told Live Science. She argued that the most important factor of the speed-training exercises, which may be missing from video games, was that they were adaptive. They involved looking for objects in the center and at the edges of a computer screen to find two that match; the exercise would refresh faster and with more objects as performance improved.

This adaptation wasn't an element of the memory and reasoning exercises, which may explain why those didn't lead to a significantly reduced risk of dementia, Albert said.

One strength of the trial was that it included a large group of participants, a quarter of whom belonged to minority groups. "People who are Black or Hispanic have a higher risk of dementia," Albert said, arguing that their representation in the study may make the results more generalizable.

The next step is to investigate whether the exercises prompted any specific brain changes that delayed neurodegeneration.

"We need to understand the mechanisms, because if we did, then we could better design the interventions," Albert said. Kramer suggested following up with MRI scans to see how cognitive exercises alter brain anatomy in human participants.

He noted that scientists can train lab animals, such as rodents, to perform similar training exercises. "And then you can do things that are a bit more invasive," he added, such as changing the lab mice's genetic makeup to understand what genetic factors are at play.

In the meantime, scientists already know of other lifestyle factors that are tied to a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, Albert noted. These include engaging in regular physical activity and maintaining blood pressure within the normal range. Someday, perhaps brain-training exercises will also become a common method to stave off dementia — especially since, in the trial, it took only a few weeks of training to protect the participants for 20 years, Albert said.

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Article Sources

Coe, N. B., Miller, K. E., Sun, C., Taggert, E., Gross, A. L., Jones, R. N., Felix, C., Albert, M. S., Rebok, G. W., Marsiske, M., Ball, K. K., & Willis, S. L. (2026). Impact of cognitive training on claims‐based diagnosed dementia over 20 years: Evidence from the active study. Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/trc2.70197

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/alzheimers-dementia/only-certain-types-of-brain-training-exercises-reduce-dementia-risk-large-trial-reveals at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

'There's no reason to ban us from playing': Analysis debunks notion that transgender women have inherent physical advantages in sports

A meta-analysis of 52 studies that included over 5,000 transgender people suggests that transgender women's physical fitness after hormone therapy is comparable to that of cisgender women.

Sadie Schreiner (second from the left), is a transgender track-and-field athlete who has competed at the college level. New research suggests being a transgender woman does not confer inherent physical advantages over cisgender women. (Image credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images)

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Transgender women who have undergone hormone therapy show comparable physical fitness to cisgender women, according to the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date.

The review, published Tuesday (Feb. 3) in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at 52 published studies that assessed the body composition, muscular strength and aerobic capacity of nearly 6,500 individuals, including about 2,900 transgender women and 2,300 transgender men.

But what does that mean for actual performance in women's sports?

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While the study counters the claim that trans women have an inherent, unfair advantage due to certain baseline physical traits, it did not look at elite athletes and does not capture all the elements that go into sports performance, experts said.

"Sport is multifactorial," senior study author Bruno Gualano, an associate professor at the University of São Paulo's Center of Lifestyle Medicine, told Live Science in an email. "Training quality, access to facilities, psychological stress and exposure to discrimination all influence performance, and these factors are rarely captured in physiological studies."

But it does argue against a blanket ban on trans women in sports competition, experts told Live Science.

Systematic analysis

The analysis was motivated by recent efforts unfolding around the world to ban transgender people from athletic competitions.

"We've seen increasingly restrictive rules on transgender participation in sport, often justified by claims of large and unavoidable physical advantages," Gualano said.

While circulating testosterone levels seem to increase muscle mass, strength and aerobic capacity, these bans, typically aimed at transgender women and girls, often argue that even past exposure to testosterone during puberty gives individuals a permanent and inherent physical advantage over cisgender women.

To see if that was the case, the researchers pooled data from many studies that employed different approaches and measures to compare physical fitness in transgender and cisgender people. The study participants ranged from 14 to 41 years old, and most were adults.

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Among transgender women, hormone therapies included different forms of estrogen and antiandrogens, which suppress the effects of testosterone, while transgender men used various forms of testosterone. Most studies followed participants for about one to three years of therapy.

When normalized for height, "transgender women, after gender-affirming hormone therapy, do not show greater strength or aerobic capacity than cisgender women," Gualano said. That included both upper and lower-body strength.

The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games are running from Feb. 6 to 22 this year. (Image credit: Photo by Alex Pantling via Getty Images)

Transgender women also had comparable fat mass to that of cisgender women.

They have slightly higher lean mass, he noted, but that doesn't translate into greater strength or maximal oxygen consumption. Studies rarely look at metrics of specific athletic performance, so the team could not assess that, Gualano added.

Most of the study participants included in the analysis were not competitive athletes, so "we should be cautious about extrapolating directly to elite sport," Gualano noted. But that said, "if there were large, intrinsic physical advantages, we would expect to observe them even in non-athletic populations, and we do not."

"What's new here is the consistency of these findings across many datasets," Ada Cheung, an endocrinologist and head of the Trans Health Research Group at the University of Melbourne, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. The results challenge the notion that trans women have intrinsic athletic advantages, she added.

Phoebe Toups Dugas, an associate professor of human-centered computing in the Exertion Games Lab at Monash University in Australia who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"Counter to narratives being used to push transgender athletes out of sport, there's no evidence that transgender women have any kind of advantage," she told Live Science in an email. "There's no reason to ban us from playing."

Olympic competition

While the U.S. Olympic Committee has banned transgender women from competing in women's events to align with an executive order from President Donald Trump, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not yet done so. But recent reporting suggests that might change, as the IOC has said it will issue new rules this year. The IOC medical and scientific director has reportedly stated that, even after hormone therapy, transgender women who have gone through male puberty retain physical advantages over cisgender women. She has said the new rules also may apply to cisgender women with "male" characteristics, such as Y chromosomes or "male levels" of testosterone.

The results of the recent meta-analysis do not support those rules, Gualano said. While the new analysis can't tell us anything about the fitness of cisgender women with relatively high testosterone, other datasets suggest that "performance is not determined by testosterone alone," he added.

"A major gap in the literature is our limited understanding of how hormonal effects interact with long-term training and social context, particularly in women and gender diverse populations," Gualano said. "Another gap lies in the assumption that testosterone thresholds neatly separate 'fair' from 'unfair' competition, an idea that is far less scientifically robust than often assumed."

For now, the previous regulations are in place for the 2026 Winter Olympics, which kick off Feb. 6 in Milan. Elis Lundholm of Sweden will compete in mogul skiing as the Winter Games' first openly transgender athlete. As this discussion unfolds, it's important to note that few studies track transgender athletes in high-stakes competitions, in part because there are very few competing.

Given a lack of data on elite sports, an analysis like Gualano's can be very informative, Toups Dugas said.

"These findings are of tremendous value to the IOC," she said. "There is a big opportunity here for the IOC to make the Olympics more diverse and really support athletes."

Youth sports

Most athletes, of course, aren't competing in the Olympics. Instead, many are children playing youth sports. At least 29 U.S. states currently ban transgender youth from competing on teams aligned with their gender identity, and although some of these bans have been legally challenged, they are expected to be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2026.

Though the new meta-analysis included some data from adolescents, it was not enough to make robust conclusions about kids' body composition, Toups Dugas said. "But I don't think it needs to for us to make sensible choices."

Cheung agreed. "There is no evidence here to justify categorical bans on trans youth in sport."

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Article Sources

Sieczkowska, S. M., Mazzolani, B. C., Coimbra, D. R., Longobardi, I., Casale, A. R., Da Hora, J. D. F. V. M. P., Roschel, H., & Gualano, B. (2026). Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2025-110239

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/theres-no-reason-to-ban-us-from-playing-analysis-debunks-notion-that-transgender-women-have-inherent-physical-advantages-in-sports at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Scientists infiltrated volunteers' dreams to boost their creative thinking

A small study hints that you can "trigger" memories of specific puzzles while a person dreams and that the dreamer may be more likely to solve the puzzle the next day.

In a new study, scientists attempted to manipulate volunteers' dreams with musical cues. (Image credit: Tatiana Maksimova/Getty Images)

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In the Hollywood blockbuster "Inception" (2010), a dedicated team of "dream extractors" is hired to alter a CEO's decision-making by manipulating his dreams. In the movie, this feat involves a private jet and liters of sedative gas — but a new study suggests they could have achieved a similar effect with only some steel-drum jingles and a comfy bed in a research lab.

The new work shows that audio cues played to sleeping volunteers during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep when most dreaming occurs, can manipulate dream content.

In some cases, this manipulation improved the volunteers' ability to solve puzzles they had first encountered the day before.

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The work was published Feb. 5 in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness.

'Sleep on it'

If you are stuck on a problem, people often advise you to "sleep on it." And there's some scientific evidence to back this up, said study co-author Ken Paller, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University. For example, in one 2012 study, volunteers asked to solve association-based problems performed better after sleeping than did another group that stayed awake.

But how sleep might achieve this was unclear.

"The motivation for this study was to see if dreaming has something to do with the benefits of sleep we get for problem solving," Paller told Live Science.

Paller's team recruited 20 participants who reported having a history of or interest in lucid dreaming, a dream state in which the sleeper becomes aware that they are dreaming and can manipulate their dream to some degree.

Before taking a snooze in the research lab, these participants were tasked with solving puzzles that tested creative cognition within a certain time limit. These included tasks in which volunteers had to alter matchstick diagrams to make certain shapes by moving a limited number of sticks.

As the volunteers considered each puzzle, a short soundtrack played; the tune was unique to each conundrum. These themes included guitar riffs, whistling tunes and steel-drum songs. The puzzles were difficult enough that each participant was left with several unsolved puzzles by the time the testing concluded.

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Lead study author Karen Konkoly, who worked on the project while studying dreams in Paller's lab, also taught the volunteers specific eye movements, with the idea that, if the participants were experiencing lucid dreaming, they could attempt to communicate that to the researchers by moving their eyes.

Then, the researchers fitted the participants' scalps with electrodes to measure their brain activity and eye movements while they slept. The participants were allowed to watch "Inception" or "Waking Life" (2001), another film about lucid dreaming, while the electrodes were applied.

Hours later, as the volunteers entered REM sleep, the research team, led by Konkoly, began playing soundtracks associated with puzzles they had failed to solve. Immediately afterward, they woke up the participants to record any dreams they'd had in diaries. The participants recorded their dreams over the next two weeks and spent one more night in the lab solving puzzles.

Three-quarters of the volunteers reported having dreams that related to the unsolved puzzles, and the data suggested they were more likely to dream about the puzzles the researchers had cued up with audio. Six dreamers, upon hearing the puzzle soundtracks, signaled to Konkoly they were lucid by moving their eyes or changing their breathing in preset patterns.

The next day, all of the volunteers attempted the puzzles again. The results were mixed.

If certain unsolved puzzles had appeared in the volunteers' dreams, the volunteers were more likely to solve those puzzles the next day, compared with puzzles they had not dreamed about. The volunteers solved 42% of the puzzles they dreamed about and only 17% of those that didn't appear in their dreams.

Does lucid dreaming help or hinder?

This finding doesn't definitively prove that dreams help us solve puzzles, though. It's possible that the volunteers simply dreamed about the puzzles they were most curious about and were more likely to solve at baseline.

To the authors' surprise, the volunteers whose eye movements suggested they had lucidly dreamed were less likely to solve the puzzles than those who'd had non-lucid dreams about the puzzles. Paller said the study's small sample size may have produced this effect.

"I think we didn't have enough lucid dreams to really be sure about that," he said.

Emma Peters, a dream engineer at the University of Bern in Switzerland who was not involved in the study, said a major talking point in the field had been whether lucid dreaming might actually impair creative thinking, compared to non-lucid dreaming.

"The idea is, you can do creative problem-solving in dreams because your dreams are so bizarre," she said, "and they make associations that you would normally not do if you were consciously there."

For Paller, interpretations of dream research face another important limitation: the other parts of the sleep cycle in which dreams don't occur as often. At present, it's impossible to rule out the possibility that brain activity in these stages could be a driving force in creative thinking; the downstream results of that thinking may then emerge in remembered dreams.

But the field is gradually building a picture of what goes on in the sleeping brain. For Paller, these unresolved mysteries are what keeps dream science exciting.

"I think science is fun when there's still things you need to understand," he said, "and you haven't got there."

Article Sources

Konkoly, K. R., Morris, D. J., Hurka, K., Martinez, A. M., Sanders, K. E., & Paller, K. A. (2026). Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2026(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/sleep/scientists-infiltrated-volunteers-dreams-to-boost-their-creative-thinking at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

CT scans reveal the last moments of Inca children sacrificed as 'messengers to the gods'

New CT scans reveal the last moments of the Inca children who were sacrificed and mummified about 500 years ago.

The most famous ice mummy from Mount Ampato is the "Ice Maiden" or "Juanita," shown here in a reconstruction. She was sacrificed when she was about 14 years old. (Image credit: D. Socha)

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The famous Inca "ice mummies" have been holding secrets since their discovery decades ago, and CT scans are now revealing what these children's last moments were like, a new study finds.

The researchers examined the remains of four Inca children who were killed about 500 years ago and left on remote peaks in the Andes as "messengers to the gods," the researchers wrote in the study. However, the new CT scans revealed that at least one of these children had been killed elsewhere and then relocated to a mountain peak, according to the study, which was published in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The research also showed that some of the children selected for this ritual "capacocha" sacrifice had injuries and diseases when they were killed, contrary to some early Spanish accounts that the victims were always in perfect health.

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"Our findings show that chroniclers' accounts should be treated with caution," Dagmara Socha, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland and the lead author of the study, told Live Science. "Although historical sources describe the children as physically perfect and without flaws, modern scientific analyses reveal a very different reality."

The four mummies are those of an 8-year-old girl, a 10-year-old girl, a 14-year-old girl, and the famed "Lady of Ampato" — also known as the "Ice Maiden" and "Momia Juanita" — who was also sacrificed when she was about 14 years old. Her mummified body was found in a shrine near the summit of Peru's volcanic Mount Ampato in 1995.

The researchers determined that the 10-year-old girl found near the same summit had been sacrificed elsewhere. The scans revealed that the organs in her abdomen and chest cavities had been removed and replaced with stones and textiles before the body was wrapped and placed in a sitting position, with the knees drawn up to the chin, on a plateau near the top of the mountain.

Although the ice mummies were preserved by the extremely dry air at the altitudes where they were found — about 19,000 feet (5,800 meters) above sea level — the 10-year-old girl's missing organs are the first evidence that any of the bodies had been deliberately prepared for mummification, possibly to remedy what were seen as the victims' physical deficiencies, the researchers wrote.

Ice mummies

The medical scans of the four mummies — three from Mount Ampato and another from a shrine near the summit of the Sara Sara volcano, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) roughly west — showed some of the young sacrificial victims had suffered from several ailments.

Three of the "ice mummies" in the new study were discovered in 1995 near the summit of Peru's volcanic Mount Ampato. (Image credit: D. Socha)

Scans of the 8-year-old girl's mummy found on Mount Ampato revealed an enlarged esophagus that may have been a symptom of Chagas disease (a parasitic infection common in the region) and scars in her lungs that may have been caused by tuberculosis.

These health conditions were likely common in the Inca population at the time, so it's no surprise that the mummies weren't "perfect" as the European accounts had claimed. "This may reflect the general living conditions within the Inca Empire, but it may also indicate that European chroniclers did not fully understand what the Incas themselves considered ideal," Socha said.

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Parts of the body of one ice mummy from Mount Ampato were removed and replaced by textiles before she was wrapped up. (Image credit: D. Socha)

Divine messengers

According to some early Spanish writers in Peru, the capacocha sacrifices were among the most important rituals in the Inca world. In these sacrifices, children or young teens — both boys and girls — would be ritually killed, and their bodies would be naturally mummified near the tops of high mountains so they would act as "messengers to the gods."

The methods of killing differed; some victims were strangled, while others were smothered. Socha said it seemed that each of the four sacrificial victims in the study had been killed by a severe blow to the head, possibly from a wooden club.

Early Spanish accounts indicated that the young victims of the capacocha rituals acted as "messengers" for a long time after they had been ritually killed. For example, a report by the conquistador Pedro Pizarro (a young cousin of Francisco Pizarro) stated that living people visited ice mummies to seek approvals for marriages.

"The evidence suggests that these children … continued to function as mediators between the living community and the divine Apus [Andean deities] long after their deaths," Socha said.

Article Sources

Socha, D. M., Panzer, S., Reinhard, J., Zink, A., Sulca, W. C. M., Grupp, F., & Paladin, A. (2026). Paleoradiology opens new insights into frozen mummified children from Ampato and Sara Sara volcanoes, Peru. Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, 70, 105610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105610

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ct-scans-reveal-the-last-moments-of-inca-children-sacrificed-as-messengers-to-the-gods at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

The largest reservoir of hydrogen on Earth may be hiding in its core

Earth's core contains nine to 45 times more hydrogen than the planet's oceans do, according to a new study that could settle a debate about when and how hydrogen was delivered to Earth.

Earth's core may be the biggest hydrogen reservoir on the planet. (Image credit: bpawesome/Getty Images)

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Earth's core contains up to 45 times more hydrogen than the oceans do, making it the largest hydrogen reservoir on the planet, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that this vast amount of hydrogen entered the core during its formation around 4.5 billion years ago, and did not arrive via comets that pummeled Earth once the core was established. The finding could settle the debate about when and how hydrogen was delivered to our planet.

"That hydrogen on Earth, including hydrogen in the core, was delivered during planet formation is an established hypothesis," study lead author Dongyang Huang, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University in China, told Live Science in an email. "What differentiates the community is when hydrogen was delivered along Earth's formation."

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This debate has continued because hydrogen deep inside Earth is extremely difficult to quantify. Hydrogen is the smallest and lightest element in the universe, so most techniques do not have the resolution to properly detect it in high-pressure and high-temperature environments such as Earth's core.

But estimating how much hydrogen is locked inside the core is a key to understanding how the hydrogen got there in the first place, Huang said.

Previous research used a technique called X-ray diffraction to estimate the amount of hydrogen in Earth's core. This method quantifies the minerals and other substances in a material by analyzing how that material scatters X-rays. Because Earth's core is made almost entirely of iron, scientists added hydrogen to a sample of iron in the lab and measured the expansion of the iron's crystal structure to calculate how much hydrogen could be trapped inside the core.

The downside of X-ray diffraction in this case is that it makes a couple of crucial assumptions, Huang said. First, it assumes researchers have an accurate understanding of iron crystal structures and how they react under certain conditions. Second, it supposes that silicon and oxygen, both present in the core, do not deform the crystal structure when they dissolve into iron — which, it turns out, they do.

For the new study, Huang and his colleagues employed an alternative method known as atom probe tomography. This technique can "provide 3D nanoscale compositional mapping of all the elements in the periodic table" and is "ideal for high-pressure samples," Huang said.

The researchers simulated the conditions that likely existed when Earth's core was forming. To begin, they coated a tiny sample of iron metal with hydrous silicate glass to model the core covered in magma. Then, they placed this object inside a diamond anvil cell — a device in which two diamond crystals squeeze together to generate extreme pressure similar to that found in Earth's core. To create high-temperature conditions, the scientists used lasers that heated the object to about 8,730 degrees Fahrenheit (4,830 degrees Celsius).

A diagram showing the structure of a diamond anvil cell. (Image credit: Photo Vault via Alamy)

The researchers used atom probe tomography in this context. They discovered that hydrogen, oxygen and silicon dissolve into iron crystal structures simultaneously under extreme conditions, thus altering the crystals in previously unknown ways.

Crucially, equal amounts of hydrogen and silicon entered the "core" from the "magma" in the experiment, which helped the researchers estimate that hydrogen makes up 0.07% to 0.36% of Earth's core by weight.

The results, published Tuesday (Feb. 10) in the journal Nature Communications, suggest Earth's core contains nine to 45 times as much hydrogen as the planet's oceans. If comets had delivered hydrogen to Earth after the core had finished forming, hydrogen would mostly occur in Earth's shallower layers. But the finding that the core is Earth's biggest hydrogen reservoir indicates that hydrogen was delivered before the core was fully formed, Huang said.

"This is the first time that the mechanism of how hydrogen enters the core was identified," he said.

Article Sources

Huang, D., Murakami, M., Gerstl, S. & Liebske, C. (2026). Experimental quantification of hydrogen content in the Earth's core. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68821-6

What's inside Earth quiz: Test your knowledge of our planet's hidden layers

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/the-largest-reservoir-of-hydrogen-on-earth-may-be-hiding-in-its-core at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Should you buy a new or used camera for astrophotography?

Is buying used a smart move for astrophotography cameras, or should you stick with the latest tech?

(Image credit: Future)

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Astrophotography — the craft of capturing the night sky — is a captivating blend of art and science, and a hobby that rewards patience and technique. For many photographers who are just getting started or upgrading their gear, a core question is what kind of camera gear they invest in.

Astrophotography is a photographic discipline that rewards a careful understanding of your gear, so we’ll be looking at whether you should buy a new or used camera when investing in equipment. The choice of course has implications for your budget, creative potential and long-term satisfaction, but in 2026, with technology advancing fast, there are some excellent deals to be had on some fantastic camera gear of yesteryear that can offer very satisfying results.

In this guide, we’ll unpack the key differences between new and used gear, why those differences matter for night-sky shooting, what models you can find good deals on right now and how to pair your camera body with the right lenses to get the most out of your astrophotography.

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- Buy used gear from:

- MPB

- KEH

- B&H Photo

- Adorama

- Amazon Renewed

The basics: Differences between new and used

You can save money buy purchasing an older camera, but it may not have all the tech newer models have. (Image credit: Getty Images)

At its simplest, the difference between new and used gear is condition, but the implications run deeper and may have ramifications for your buying decisions.

New cameras and lenses come with full manufacturer warranties, the latest features and untouched sensors with maximum lifespan. They offer peace of mind, whereas with used gear, you’ll always be taking somewhat of a calculated risk.

But you’ll also be spending a lot less — sometimes 30–60% below retail value — and this lets you stretch your budget further, into the lenses, tracking mounts or accessories that are often vital for making the most of your astrophotography. If you can take the risk of a potentially shorter remaining lifespan and any associated cosmetic wear that comes with a device being used, these savings can be very worth looking into.

It’s also worth pointing out that the more reputable used marketplaces (like MPB or KEH) grade gear carefully and often include return policies or short warranties that mitigate some of the said risk, so if possible, we’d recommend buying from one of these platforms.

What to look out for in used equipment for astrophotography

New or used, it's important that your camera can handle low light scenes. (Image credit: Getty)

Astrophotography pushes cameras to their limits in ways that everyday photography doesn’t. Here are a few things that are worth considering or investigating further if you’re looking at used gear.

Noise and sensor health: Astrophotography involves long exposures at high ISO settings, which exacerbate sensor noise. New cameras typically have fresher sensors with minimal wear, tighter pixel performance and more advanced noise-reduction algorithms. Older or heavily used sensors may show more hot pixels and uneven calibration, which complicates stacking and post-processing.

It’s also a question of technology, as older devices won’t have such advanced sensors, so if you’re buying brand new and spending money on the latest tech, you’ll likely notice a difference when it comes to noise levels.

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Battery Life and reliability: Long astro sessions drain batteries fast, especially when using live view or other monitoring equipment. New gear generally delivers better battery life and more reliable electronics, which matters when you’re miles from home in the dark. If you are buying used, we’d recommend stocking up on a few new batteries from reputable providers (try to buy authentic brand stock if possible) to keep the kit going.

Features for night sky shooting: Modern cameras, especially if they’re of the mirrorless variety, increasingly include features that make astrophotography easier. These include things like silent shooting modes to eliminate vibration, advanced noise reduction, higher dynamic ranges and on-sensor stabilization. While not essential, these features can improve workflow and outcomes if efficiency is a priority for you.

- Best astrophotography cameras

- Best beginner astrophotography cameras

Used gear bargains

If you know where to look, you can find used camera bargains you can trust. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Most of us photographers don’t have the luxury of buying new every time, and even the most seasoned professional will have purchased their fair share of used devices over time, so it’s worth doing a bit of research to find out what strategies you can use to get capable astrophotography gear without breaking the bank.

Most classic DSLRs and early mirrorless bodies that are now a generation or two old remain solid performers — the key is using them correctly and pairing them with the right lenses.

Full-frame mirrorless bodies like the Sony A7 III have become staples on the used market, offering excellent dynamic range and low-light performance for deep-sky and Milky Way work. Expect to pay around $600-$800 for a decent A7 II or III that will still deliver great performance.

If you don’t want to go down the mirrorless route, older DSLRs are always worth looking at. Canon’s 5D range is still a mainstay — although not particularly trendy — and something like the 5D Mark IV will deliver wonderful value. It’s still one of the best cameras around, with great weatherproofing for nights outside. The Canon 6D and Nikon D750 have brilliant low-light performance, with the Mark I version of the former available for well under $500.

Look out for used marketplaces running seasonal promotions or discounts for new buyers, providing extra savings on certified gear.

Our picks

Sony Alpha A7 III

$948

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1

Sony A7 II

$1,162.87

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Canon EOS 5D Mark IV

$1,343

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Canon EOS 6D

$247

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Nikon D750

$313

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We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices

New gear worth considering

New cameras are in perfect condition, and also often have more features and astro-friendly tech than older models. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)

If budget allows, many newer cameras offer features that benefit astrophotographers. Full-frame mirrorless bodies like the Nikon Z series or Canon EOS R8 combine modern sensor technology with lightweight bodies, making them great for both astro and travel photography. With newer models, you’ll also notice the difference when it comes to weight and portability.

Advanced models such as the Sony A7 IV deliver improved noise performance and processing power straight out of the box, which can make a noticeable difference for low-light captures, but are probably unnecessary for first-time astrophotographers.

Our picks

Canon EOS R8

$1,109

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Sony A7 IV

$2,499.99

$1,998

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Pairing with the right lens

It's not just cameras — buying used lenses is a great way to build your kit list on a budget. (Image credit: Jase Parnell-Brookes)

Buying the right camera body is only part of the equation, and in many cases, perhaps the least important one. For astrophotography, especially wide-field nightscapes, lens choice is critical. Here’s where you’ll want to spend a bit more money, if you can.

The basic science of how lenses work means that astrophotography typically benefits from wide-angle, fast lenses. Faster lenses (low f-numbers like f/1.4–f/2.8) let in more light, reducing noise and exposure time. Wide fields of view (14mm–35mm on full frame) capture broad swathes of sky, including constellations and the Milky Way.

Look for wide prime lenses to start with. Try an f/2.8 and then, when you’re done with that, spend a bit more and invest in the more expensive f/1.8 or f/1.4 versions. These will set you back around $1,000 used or somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 new. Not for the faint-hearted, but the Sigma f/1.4 DG lens is one of the best available for wide-angled low-light photography.

It’s worth mentioning that manual focus lenses can also be cost-effective used options, giving good sharpness and control without premium pricing — sharp, fast and accurate autofocus is less important for astrophotography.

Your camera’s sensor size impacts lens behavior. Full-frame sensors capture broader scenes with less noise, while APS-C bodies crop tighter, which can be an advantage for telephoto astro work but mean narrower shots.

- Best wide-angle prime lenses for astrophotography

- Best telephoto zoom lenses

Our picks

Canon RF 20mm f/1.4L VCM

$1,899

View

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Nikon Z 20mm f/1.8 S

$814.35

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Sony FE 16mm f/1.8 G

$898

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We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices

What's the verdict?

There are pros and cons to both new and used cameras — ultimately, it's about making an informed decision based on your needs. (Image credit: Getty Images)

So, should you buy new or used gear for your astrophotography? In summary, the key question isn’t always “new vs used” — instead, consider what combination of features and cost gives you the most astrophotography value.

If you value peace of mind, longevity and the latest low-light features, buying new —particularly a modern, mirrorless body — can be worth the investment and most modern setups will last a very long time. For many photographers, however, buying used gear represents a smart way to get more capability for less, freeing up cash for lenses and other accessories that will ultimately make your final images more rewarding. If you’re just starting out and want to find a simple setup to learn the ropes and start capturing impressive images, our money would definitely be in used gear.

Regardless of your choice, the key to great astrophotography lies not just in the price tag but in understanding your specific gear, even if a previous owner has used it before. Know your camera, understand your lenses, and you will be mastering long exposures and creating stunning images of the night sky before you know it.

Our picks

Sony A7 IV

$2,499.99

$1,998

View

See all prices

Sony Alpha A7 III

$948

View

See all prices

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV

$1,343

View

See all prices

Canon EOS R8

$1,109

View

See all prices

Nikon D750

$313

View

See all prices

We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/technology/should-you-buy-a-new-or-used-camera-for-astrophotography at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Paleo-Inuit people braved icy seas to reach remote Greenland islands 4,500 years ago, archaeologists discover

Archaeological remains on the Kitsissut islands off the coast of Greenland reveal that whole communities regularly journeyed across the dangerous Arctic waters.

Study co-author Mari Kleist documents an Early Paleo-Inuit tent ring on Isbjørne Island, Kitsissut. (Image credit: M. Walls, M. Kleist & P. Knudsen; Antiquity Publications Ltd.)

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Paleo-Inuit people reached remote islands in the High Arctic off the northwest coast of Greenland nearly 4,500 years ago, according to a new study that documents evidence of prehistoric dwellings there.

These early Arctic people, who had fine-tuned advanced watercraft technology and seafaring skills, repeatedly made the treacherous open-water journey to the islands to access vital maritime resources.

The island cluster of Kitsissut (also known as the Carey Islands) is the westernmost point of Greenland. Consisting of six small islands, Kitsissut is located at the heart of a rich marine environment called a polynya, which is a semipermanent area of open water in the middle of sea ice. Contemporary Inuit identified Kitsissut as an important place for hunting seabirds and accessing eggs, which prompted a team of archaeologists to investigate the islands for traces of prehistoric activity.

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In a study published Monday (Feb. 9) in the journal Antiquity, researchers detailed the results of their archaeological survey of three of the islands. They found nearly 300 archaeological features in their survey, with the largest concentration being 15 Paleo-Inuit dwellings at the tip of Isbjørne Island. The dwellings suggested that people made the difficult journey from Greenland's mainland to Kitsissut numerous times.

The dwellings were identified by a ring of stones indicating the past presence of a tent with a hearth at the center. Based on an animal bone discovered in one of the tent rings, the archaeologists dated the occupation to around 4,000 to 4,475 years ago.

"In a regional perspective, it is a lot of tent rings in one place, indeed one of the largest concentrations," study lead author Matthew Walls, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, told Live Science in an email. This suggests that Kitsissut and the polynya was "a place of return," Walls said. "It wasn't just a one-off visit by a family blown off course, for example."

A view of the crossing between Kitsissut and the shores of northwest Greenland. The minimum distance to land (Nuuliit) is 33 miles (53 kilometers). (Image credit: M. Walls, M. Kleist & P. Knudsen; Antiquity Publications Ltd)

It is unclear exactly how the Paleo-Inuit people arrived at Kitsissut, but the minimum journey from the mainland to the dwellings on Isbjørne Island is 33 miles (53 kilometers), the researchers wrote in the study. The route through the open sea is marked by erratic crosswinds, dense fog and powerful mixing currents — an extraordinarily risky journey that would have taken around 12 hours to complete in a wood-framed, skin-covered watercraft typical of Paleo-Inuit peoples.

"They are almost certainly visiting during the warm season, which doesn't last very long," Walls said. "The travel conditions also make it most likely that they are doing this in the brief summer."

Paleo-Inuit people probably headed to Kitsissut to hunt and gather eggs from the thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia), a polar seabird that nests in the thousands in the summer. The dwelling sites the archaeologists found are located directly below their nesting cliffs, Walls said, and there are numerous murre bones around the tent rings.

An illustration of several Early Paleo-Inuit tent rings that have been found on Isbjørne Island. (Image credit: M. Walls, M. Kleist & P. Knudsen; Antiquity Publications Ltd)

"The number of rings does give the sense that it is a whole community making the crossing, rather than a small hunting party," Walls said, but "that is something that we could perhaps prove with further excavation, giving us a better snapshot of community life."

The Paleo-Inuit people's ability to navigate frigid expanses of open water in kayak-like vessels to reach Kitsissut shows their strong commitment to a maritime lifestyle, the researchers wrote, but it also demonstrates their advanced skills in navigation and watercraft technology.

"Archaeologists have tended to think about the area as a crossroads, or primarily a route of movement between Canada and Greenland," Walls said. But Kitsissut and the polynya are "better framed as a place of innovation."

Article Sources

Walls, M., Kleist, M., & Knudsen, P. (2026). Voyage to Kitsissut: a new perspective on Early Paleo-Inuit watercraft and maritime lifeways at a High Arctic polynya. Antiquity. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2026.10285

Archaeology Fragments Quiz: Can you work out what these mysterious artifacts are?

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/paleo-inuit-people-braved-icy-seas-to-reach-remote-greenland-islands-4-500-years-ago-archaeologists-discover at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Microbes in Iceland are hoarding nitrogen, and that's mucking up the nutrient cycle

A study in Iceland found that microbes are hoarding more nitrogen for themselves, altering nutrient cycling and leaving less for plants.

Geothermal activity near Hveragerði, Iceland, has created a natural laboratory where researchers can study how ecosystems, including microbes and plans, respond to long-term warming. (Image credit: Sara Marañón Jiménez)

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As high-latitude soils warm, microbes in the soil change how they handle nutrients like nitrogen. Normally, these microbes are nitrogen recyclers, pulling it from the soil and turning it into inorganic forms — like ammonium and nitrates — that plants can absorb. But a new study published in Global Change Biology suggests that with rising temperatures, microbes are changing their strategy. They take up more nitrogen for themselves while reducing the amount they release back into the environment. This change alters the flow of nitrogen through the ecosystem, potentially slowing vegetation growth and affecting the rate at which our planet warms.

These findings come from experiments carried out in subarctic grasslands near Hveragerði, Iceland. In 2008, earthquakes rerouted groundwater in an area that had been warmed by geothermal gradients, creating patches of soil heated between 0.5°C and 40°C above normal temperatures. The event turned the region into a natural laboratory where researchers could study how ecosystems respond to long-term warming under natural conditions.

Earlier research in this location had already shown that in warming soils, microbes become highly active while plants are dormant. As a result, nitrogen-containing compounds released into the soil by the microbes were lost, either by leaching into groundwater or by escaping into the atmosphere as the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.

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An abandoned greenhouse near the experimental sites in Iceland serves as a reminder that climate change is having an especially strong effect on high-latitude soils. (Image credit: Sara Marañón Jiménez)

In this work, scientists added nitrogen-15 to the soil, which they could track to determine how much the plants had used up and what they did with it. Researchers found that after the initial nutrient loss, microbes became more conservative in their handling of nitrogen, recycling nitrogen internally rather than absorbing more from the ground. At the same time, microbes stopped releasing ammonium, a nitrogen-rich by-product of their normal metabolism that is usable by plants — the microbial equivalent of urine, said study coauthor Sara Marañón Jiménez, a soil scientist at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications in Spain.

Nitrogen Heist

This change in nitrogen cycling has important consequences for the whole ecosystem. On the one hand, it has a positive effect because it prevents further nitrogen loss.

"The study shows that nitrogen is not released as inorganic nitrogen, but it seems to go directly in an organic loop," said Sara Hallin, a soil microbiologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala who was not involved in the study. "You could say that it's a positive aspect, and so it's more beneficial for the ecosystem if that nitrogen is sort of retained."

On the other hand, microbes' nutrient-hoarding behavior might reduce nitrogen availability for plants. "There's a delicate feedback between plants that take nitrogen, make photosynthesis, and put carbon in the soil as organic matter and microorganisms that take this organic matter, recycle it, and release nitrogen in forms the plants can use," Marañón Jiménez said. "If microorganisms start immobilizing nitrogen, it could lead to competition between microbes and plants."

The team is now working on a study to determine what exactly happens to soil at the very early stage of warming, before nutrients have been lost. "This way we hope to recover the first chapters, to see what we've been missing,"

To this end, they transplanted bits of normal soils into heated areas to study the process in detail from the very beginning. "Soils exposed to [soil] temperature increases showed the same nutrient loss after 5 years [as] after 10 years," Marañón Jiménez said, suggesting that most of the nutrient loss occurs early on.

A Greenhouse Time Bomb

Climate models may be underestimating how the loss of nitrogen and carbon from cold soils is contributing to global warming, researchers said. Disruptions to nutrient cycling at these latitudes could represent a previously overlooked source of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Arctic soils store massive amounts of carbon, built up over thousands of years from plant material that microbes cannot fully break down. This partially decomposed organic matter accumulates, forming one of the largest carbon reservoirs on Earth. As temperatures rise, scientists expect microbes to become more active, accelerating decomposition and releasing much of this stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Researchers had hoped warmer temperatures would allow plants to grow more vigorously, absorbing some of the extra carbon released by Arctic soils.

The new findings call this idea into question. "It's a chain reaction," Marañón Jiménez explained. "As biomass is lost from the microbial mass, that means there's less storage capacity for carbon and nitrogen in the soil, leading to poorer soils where plants can't grow as well, and plants cannot compensate emissions by absorbing more carbon."

Studying these geothermally heated soils could yield confusing results, though. "It's not really the way global warming works," Hallin said. Global warming includes increases in air temperature, she explained, whereas the plants in the current study had only their root system in a warmer climate, not their aboveground shoot system. "That could potentially cause some effects [the researchers] are not accounting for," she said.

Finally, the authors of the new study also warn that not all soils have the same response to warming. The Icelandic soils in this study are volcanic and rich in minerals, unlike the organic peat soils that dominate many Arctic regions. Deep peatlands in Scandinavia and northern Russia store vast amounts of carbon and may behave differently, highlighting the need for similar long-term studies across a wider range of Arctic landscapes.

This article was originally published on Eos.org. Read the original article.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/microbiology/microbes-in-iceland-are-hoarding-nitrogen-and-thats-mucking-up-the-nutrient-cycle at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

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Physicists push quantum boundaries by turning a superfluid into a supersolid — and back — for the first time

Physicists saw excitons, a type of quasiparticle, undergo a reversible phase transition from superfluid to supersolid for the first time, opening new doors for studying extreme states of matter.

An illustration of excitons arranging into a solid pattern in bilayer graphene. For the first time, physicists have observed a superfluid tranform into a supersolid and back again. (Image credit: Cory Dean, Columbia University)

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Scientists just watched a bizarre phase of matter turn into an even stranger one. For the first time, they saw a superfluid turn into a supersolid — a transition they weren't sure was even possible.

In a Jan. 28 study in the journal Nature, researchers observed a group of excitons — quasiparticles that combine an electron and an electron hole — transforming from a superfluid into a supersolid and back again. It is the first time excitons have been seen condensing into a supersolid, undergoing a reversible phase transition the way water can transform from a liquid to ice and back.

Secret phases of matter

There are many more phases of matter than the typical three we encounter every day (gases, liquids and solids), although most of these other matter states exist only under extreme conditions. Superfluids are one type that occurs only when some particles, like helium isotopes and excitons, are cooled to just above absolute zero — the complete absence of heat. They're not quite liquids — they flow without resistance from friction — and when stirred, they form tiny eternal tornadoes called quantum vortices.

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Supersolids, on the other hand, are a state of matter theorized to exist when superfluids are cooled even more. They keep superfluidity's zero viscosity, but instead of particles moving around in a liquid-like blob, they form an orderly structure, like a crystal lattice, while maintaining their ability to flow and form quantum vortices.

Supersolids have been made in labs before, including in 2021, when researchers created 2D supersolid dysprosium and in 2024 when they saw quantum vortices in a supersolid. However, they achieved this only by using extra equipment and energy to force particles into an orderly lattice. The new study, by contrast, demonstrates a natural phase transition.

"For the first time, we've seen a superfluid undergo a phase transition to become what appears to be a supersolid," Cory Dean, a physicist at Columbia University and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Exploring new boundaries

To do it, researchers put two pieces of graphene — which is like a very thin sheet of paper made entirely of carbon atoms — very close together. Then, they added a strong magnetic field and cooled the system to form an exciton "soup."

When cooled to between 2.7 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius) above absolute zero, the excitons formed a superfluid. When cooled more than that, the excitons changed into an electrically insulative mysterious new phase that the team suspects is the theorized supersolid state.

"Superfluidity is generally regarded as the low-temperature ground state," Jia Li, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study, said in the statement. "Observing an insulating phase that melts into a superfluid is unprecedented. This strongly suggests that the low-temperature phase is a highly unusual exciton solid."

The team is looking at other materials to test, as well as finding new ways to measure and study the exciton supersolid state.

"For now, we're exploring the boundaries around this insulating state, while building new tools to measure it directly," Dean said. Further study will help scientists understand how supersolids and superfluids behave, deepen our understanding of particle physics and work toward applications of higher-temperature supersolids.

Article Sources

Zeng, Y., Sun, D., Zhang, N. J., Nguyen, R. Q., Shi, Q., Okounkova, A., Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T., Hone, J., Dean, C. R., & Li, J. I. A. (2026). Observation of a superfluid-to-insulator transition of bilayer excitons. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09986-w

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/quantum-physics/physicists-push-quantum-boundaries-by-turning-a-superfluid-into-a-supersolid-and-back-for-the-first-time at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Dramatic death of Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) caught on camera — Space photo of the week

The Gemini North telescope snapped a spectacular view of Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) breaking apart as it emerged from the other side of the sun in October.

Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) on Nov. 11 and Dec. 6, 2025 as it began to break up, as seen by the Gemini North telescope. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Bolin. Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))

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Just as the mythological Icarus melted his feathers and wax wings when he flew too close to the sun, comets often suffer the consequences of orbiting too close to our star. That was definitely the case for Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), which was caught breaking apart by the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, late last year.

First discovered in May 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), Comet K1 was best seen from the Southern Hemisphere.

As it approached its closest point to the sun on Oct. 8, 2025, at just 31 million miles (50 million kilometers), hopes were not high for the ball of ice and dust to survive; comets that endure a close approach to the sun often brighten significantly afterward, as their component ices sublimate into gas. Surprisingly, Comet K1 emerged from behind the sun intact, but it never brightened enough to be seen with the naked eye.

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In early November, the comet's nucleus began to break up. This is not unusual for comets; extreme solar heating causes the nucleus to release jets of gas and dust — called outgassing — which combines with gravitational forces from the sun to weaken the comet's structure. Most comets either survive or never emerge from behind the sun, but Comet K1 did — and in just the right place for telescopes across the world to image its spectacular breakup.

A zoomable version of Gemini North"s image clearly shows three fragments.

Full view of Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) breaking to bits (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Bolin. Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))

Another high-stakes encounter with the sun may soon follow the dramatic disintegration of Comet K1. Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS), a "Kreutz sungrazer comet" discovered Jan. 13, is now hurtling toward the sun and will make a perilously close pass on April 4, when it gets within 465,000 miles (748,000 kilometers) of the sun's surface.

If it survives that dangerous encounter, some astronomers predict the comet could reach magnitude -4, about the same brightness as Venus. That would be a spectacular sight, but like Comet K1, Comet A1 will have to face searing heat and intense gravity and could either blaze brilliantly or succumb to the sun's fury.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/comets/dramatic-death-of-comet-c-2025-k1-atlas-caught-on-camera-space-photo-of-the-week at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Why do kids eat their boogers?

There may be something more than just a bad habit behind this behavior.

Kids, adults and other primates like chimpanzees are known to pick their noses and eat their boogers. (Image credit: PeopleImages/Getty Images)

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We've all seen it: a kid with one finger wedged up a nostril, mining the cavity for a golden nugget, teasing it out, and then gobbling it like a tasty snack. It may be gross to adults, but most children seem completely unfazed. So why do kids eat their boogers, and are they possibly onto something?

Most parents will tell you how common it is for children to eat their own mucus — a behavior known as "mucophagy" — yet data on its prevalence are scarce.

One survey suggests that nose picking overall isn't limited to kids; adults commonly do it, too. Another 2001 study based on a survey of 200 teenagers in India found that almost all participants admitted to picking their noses; what's more, nine in the sample said they routinely ate the boogers. As for the question of why kids eat their own mucus, there haven't been any rigorous investigations.

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However, researchers have found that mucophagy is shared by at least 12 other primate species.

Evolutionary biologist Anne-Claire Fabre first discovered this when watching the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis). This lemur species is known for its 3-inch-long (8 centimeters) middle finger, which it uses to pry insects out of hard-to-reach crevices. But when Fabre was watching a captive aye-aye in 2015, she was surprised to see it sticking that long, thin digit into its nostrils; extracting mucus; and then licking its finger clean.

"It was hilarious and disgusting at the same time," recalled Fabre, an associate professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland. "It seemed that it was really enjoying what it was doing. It's something that they do pretty often." (It's possible that the captive aye-aye was unusual in its nose-picking habit, but there's no reason to assume this doesn't also happen in wild aye-ayes, Fabre said.)

This made Fabre wonder if other primates eat their mucus, too. When she carried out a literature review that included her own observations of the aye-aye, she found evidence that gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, macaques, capuchins and other primates also pick their noses and eat the mucus. Most species used their fingers, but some used sticks to pry out the spoils. Some primates even extended the favor, picking others' noses too, the research found.

"When you see the composition of mucus, it's mostly water, at more than 98%," Fabre said. The remainder is composed of a protein-carbohydrate ingredient called mucins, and salts. It's possible that animals reap some benefit from consuming these ingredients, the way that some species will eat their own feces to digest the remaining nutrients there, Fabre explained.

This idea raises the question of whether there may be a deeper evolutionary basis for mucophagy in humans.

Mucus creates a protective layer that traps dust, spores and disease-causing microorganisms as we inhale, before it reaches the lungs. In 2013, a biochemist shared a hypothesis that eating boogers could therefore expose children to small doses of pathogens that train the immune system to identify these molecules and can help to trigger an immune response. However, this idea was not ultimately tested in empirical research.

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Dr. Chittaranjan Andrade, author of the 2001 nose-picking study in teenagers, is wary about such theories. "I am skeptical. Any immune substance that survives drying in the mucus is likely to be very small in quantity, and it is also likely to be digested after ingestion," therefore likely having a limited effect, the senior professor emeritus at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India, explained in an email.

Other experts have cautioned that because nasal mucus can spread pneumonia-causing bacteria, nose picking and mucophagy in children should be controlled when they are around immunocompromised people.

With no evidence behind the idea that mucophagy boosts immunity, researchers have looked for more intuitive reasons why kids eat their own mucus. Boogers can create itching, tightness, and discomfort in the nose that might prompt nose-picking, and curious children might then give it a taste-test, Fabre suspects.

One researcher asked children directly why they ate their boogers. The results were published in a 2009 book chapter that was not peer-reviewed and were based on a very small sample of just 10 children. But their insights included the fact that they liked eating boogers simply because of their appealing texture and taste.

Andrade believes that children develop this habit because it doesn't yet have the negative association that it carries for older people. "Because [children] do it openly, they are observed and scolded, and because the act, picking as well as eating, is stigmatized, my guess is that they do not repeat it, not openly anyway," Andrade said.

Until there's concrete research into the question, the answer to precisely why children eat their boogers will remain elusive. To Fabre at least, it's a topic that deserves more investigation to understand if there are possible benefits or harms of mucophagy to child development.

Ultimately, she takes kids at their word and believes that they may eat their boogers simply because they like it. "It's something that is crunchy and a little bit salty," she says. And having watched nose-picking aye-ayes for hours and learned about the prevalence of this habit in other species, it no longer gives Fabre the ick: "Honestly, in my opinion, it's not something that is disgusting."

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/human-behavior/why-do-kids-eat-their-boogers at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Impossibly powerful 'ghost particle' that slammed into Earth may have come from an exploding black hole — and it could upend both particle physics and cosmology

A supercharged neutrino that smashed into our planet in 2023 may have been spit out by an exploding primordial black hole with a "dark charge." If true, this theory could lead to a definitive catalog of all subatomic particles and unveil the elusive identity of dark matter.

A new paper suggests that an impossibly energetic neutrino, that slammed into Earth in 2023, may have been unleashed by an exploding black hole. (Image credit: Illustration by Tobias Roetsch for All About Space magazine/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

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An impossibly powerful "ghost particle" that recently slammed into Earth may have come from a rare type of exploding black hole, researchers claim.

If true, the extraordinary event may prove a theory that could upend our understanding of both particle physics and dark matter, the team argues. However, this is just one theory, and there is no direct evidence to confirm that this is indeed what happened.

In early 2023, researchers at the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT) — a massive, newly constructed array of sensors at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea — detected a neutrino, a ghostly particle that has almost no mass and does not readily interact with most matter.

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In addition to neutrinos' typical weirdness, this specific particle was noteworthy for its unusual intensity. It hit our planet with an estimated energy of up to 220 quadrillion electron volts, which is at least 100 times more powerful than any other neutrino detected to date and around 100,000 times greater than anything observed within human-made particle accelerators, like CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

Explaining the impossible

Researchers were initially unsure what caused this "impossible" neutrino to appear. It may have been birthed when a cosmic ray entered Earth's atmosphere, unleashing a cascade of high-energy particles that rained down on the planet's surface. However, its unprecedented power led experts to assume that it must have originated from some high-energy cosmic event that we don't fully understand.

In the new paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, one research group believes they have finally identified what really birthed the neutrino: an exploding, primordial black hole (PBH).

Some scientists believe that countless primordial black holes permeate the universe. These tiny singularities, which have never been directly observed, likely date back to the first moments after the Big Bang. (Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

PBHs are a hypothetical class of black holes that are extremely small — potentially ranging from the size of an atom to a pinhead — and likely date back to the first moments after the Big Bang. The concept was first popularized by British physicist Stephen Hawking in the early 1970s, who also hinted that these miniature singularities would emit large quantities of high-energy particles, dubbed Hawking radiation, as they slowly evaporated. In theory, this would also mean they have the capacity to explode.

"The lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be and the more particles it will emit," study co-author Andrea Thamm, a theoretical physicist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said in a statement. "As PBHs evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion."

One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the impossible neutrino, aside from its immense power, is that it was not observed by other neutrino detectors around the world, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory buried beneath Antarctica's icy surface. Given that PBHs are supposed to be fairly common throughout the universe, one would reasonably expect that similarly powerful particles also would have been detected before or since this possible discovery, especially as the number of neutrino detectors is quickly increasing.

PBHs could theoretically explode due to their high levels of Hawking Radiation, which leaks from these mini singularities as they "evaporate" away. (Image credit: VICTOR de SCHWANBERG/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

The researchers said this is because the neutrino was emitted by a special type of PBH, dubbed a quasi-extremal PBH, which has a "dark charge" — a version of regular electric force that includes a very heavy, hypothesized version of the electron dubbed a "dark electron."

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The dark properties of this theoretical type of PBH make it less likely that these black holes' explosions would be detected, the researchers suggested. It may also be that some of the less-powerful neutrinos detected to date may be partially incomplete detections of these events, they added.

"A PBH with a dark charge has unique properties and behaves in ways that are different from other, simpler PBH models," Thamm said. "We have shown that this can provide an explanation of all of the seemingly inconsistent experimental data."

Upending cosmic understanding

While the new research hints at the existence of quasi-extremal PBHs, it does not confirm them or prove that they explode as the researchers think. (Regular PBHs have never been directly observed, either, although there is a strong consensus that they exist.)

However, the team is confident that it will not take long to prove these dark explosions are real. The same research group recently predicted that there is a 90% chance we will see the first quasi-extremal PBH blow up by 2035, which would be extremely exciting for two main reasons.

The researchers predict that exploding PBHs could include a definitive catalog of all subatomic particles in existence. (Image credit: A. Simonnet (Sonoma State Univ.) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

First, these explosions would be so powerful that they would probably emit "a definitive catalog of all the subatomic particles in existence," including known entities, like the Higgs boson; theorized particles, like gravitons or time-traveling tachyons; and "everything else that is, so far, entirely unknown to science," the researchers wrote in the statement.

Second, these black holes could help reveal the mysterious identity of dark matter — the invisible stuff that we cannot see, yet whose gravitational force we can detect within almost every observed galaxy, including the Milky Way. The researchers wrote that quasi-extremal PBHs "could constitute all of the observed dark matter in the universe," so finding one could help put this mystery to bed. (Despite the similar names, dark matter is not directly related to dark charge or dark electrons.)

The researchers, along with several other teams in the fields of physics and cosmology, are now holding their collective breath to see when the first explosion might be detected.

This "incredible event" would provide a "new window on the universe" and help us "explain this otherwise unexplainable phenomenon," study lead author Michael Baker, a theoretical physicist at UMass Amherst, said in the statement.

Article Sources

Baker, M. J., Iguaz Juan, J., Symons, A., & Thamm, A. (2025). Explaining the PeV neutrino fluxes at KM3NeT and IceCube with quasi-extremal primordial black holes. Physical Review Letters. https://doi.org/10.1103/r793-p7ct

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/black-holes/impossibly-powerful-ghost-particle-that-slammed-into-earth-may-have-come-from-an-exploding-black-hole-and-it-could-upend-both-particle-physics-and-cosmology at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

The best toddler-friendly air purifier we have tested is now at its lowest-ever price

Save $100 on the Levoit Sprout, an excellent all-in-one appliance that combines an air purifier, a night light and a white noise machine.

(Image credit: Anna Gora)

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The pollen season is still months away, true, but this is also precisely why now may be one of the best times of the year to invest in an air purifier for allergies. Many appliances get heavily discounted during the peak of winter, just to reach full price back in the spring when the demand soars through the roof. We have seen quite a few great air purifier deals floating around this week, but the best one so far has been served by Amazon ― and if you are a parent of a toddler with a serious case of hay fever, it should definitely land on your radar.

The Levoit Sprout ― a baby-friendly appliance that combines an air purifier, a night light and a white noise machine ― is now a huge $100 off and at its lowest-ever price at Amazon.

We are big fans of this all-in-one appliance. We gave it a near-perfect score in our full Levoit Sprout review and named it the top option for nurseries in our guide to the best air purifiers. We can personally attest to its top-notch functionality and excellent air-cleaning capabilities (and we love its cute design, too).

Best for nurseries

Save 36% ($100)

Levoit Sprout: was $279.99 now $179.99 at Amazon

The Levoit Sprout is made with small- to medium-sized nurseries in mind. This clever appliance combines a HEPA-equipped air purifier with a soft night light and a white noise machine, plus it is quiet, app-connected and able to detect a wide range of airborne pollutants. Most importantly, it is designed to be safe around small children.

Price check: Levoit $279.99

View Deal

Anna Gora

Health writer and product tester

Anna Gora is a health writer and product tester at Live Science. Air purifiers hold no secrets from her — she has written extensively about seasonal allergies and poor air quality, has personally tried and tested dozens of appliances, and is one of the biggest contributors to our guides on the best air purifiers and best air purifiers for allergies.

Image 1 of 6

We reviewed the Levoit Sprout air purifier in August 2025.(Image credit: Anna Gora)

(Image credit: Anna Gora)

(Image credit: Anna Gora)

(Image credit: Anna Gora)

(Image credit: Anna Gora)

(Image credit: Anna Gora)

The Levoit Sprout has all the hallmarks of an excellent air purifier for nurseries, from a toddler-safe design to baby-soothing features and in-depth air quality monitoring. More importantly, this clever appliance does an excellent job of removing airborne pollutants without making excessive noise. When we measured how loud the Levoit Sprout was with a decibel-counting app, we did not note more than 48 dB — that is equivalent to a humming refrigerator or quiet office, and much lower than many of the air purifiers we tested before. It is unlikely to wake up your baby during the night.

That said, the Levoit Sprout is designed primarily with small- to medium-sized bedrooms in mind. If your kid's nursery is larger than 100 square feet (9.29 square meters), a more powerful appliance may be needed to achieve the best possible results. For the rooms smaller than that, however, the Levoit Sprout is a stellar choice — and now this excellent air purifier is cheaper than ever.

Key features: coverage of up to 639 square feet (59.4 square meters), pre-filter, True HEPA filter, activated carbon filter, white noise machine, white light, four fan speeds, auto mode, app control, Energy Star-certified

Product launched: April 2025

Price history: Before today's deal, the lowest price on the Levoit Sprout air purifier was $199.98, and for the better part of this year, the price sat at $279.99. Today's offer from Amazon brings the price down to $179.99, which is the lowest price we have ever seen.

Price comparison: Amazon: $179.99 | Levoit: $279.99

Reviews consensus: The Levoit Sprout was widely praised for its toddler-friendly design, ultra-quiet fans and impressive air-cleaning power, and many parents reported that it has significantly eased the allergy symptoms and sleep quality of their children. Many testers also gave a lot of positive feedback on the app functionality, especially in relation to its air quality monitoring features. The only complaint? The unreasonably high price.

Ideal Home: ★★★★½ | Live Science: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best air purifiers, Best air purifiers for pet owners

✅ Buy it if: You want a child-friendly air purifier for small- to medium-sized bedrooms.

❌ Don't buy it if: You have older children or are looking for something more powerful (such as the BlueAir Blue Signature air purifier, now 24% off at Amazon).

Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors, drones, lego and much more.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/the-best-toddler-friendly-air-purifier-we-have-tested-is-now-at-its-lowest-ever-price at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Astronaut snaps salty, pink Valentine's Day 'heart' shining in Argentina — Earth from space

A 2024 astronaut photo shows a striking pink, heart-shaped salt lake in the middle of the Argentine lowlands. The endearing photo was originally released to celebrate Valentine's Day.

The heart-shape Salinas Las Barrancas is a slat lake that frequently turns pink due to algae and other microorganisms in its shallow waters. (Image credit: NASA/ISS program)

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This amorous astronaut snap, first released by NASA on Valentine's Day 2025, highlights a pink, heart-shaped salt lake in Argentina.

Salinas Las Barrancas, sometimes known as Laguna de Salinas Chicas, is a shallow salt lake in the lowland plains of Argentina's Buenos Aires province, roughly 33 miles (53 kilometers) west of the port city of Bahía Blanca.

The lake bed is around 6 miles (10 km) across at its widest point and regularly fills with water after heavy rainfall. However, this liquid quickly evaporates due to the region's intense sunlight, exposing crystal-rich salt flats that are mined by local people, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

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In this photo, the lake appears to be close to empty because of its lighter-pink hue, which is most likely the result of an imbalance between Dunaliella salina — a species of dark-red algae that thrives in most of Earth's salt lakes — and other microorganisms in the water, according to a 2022 Smithsonian magazine article about similarly colored salt lakes.

"We have rainy seasons, when the salinity levels decrease [because there's more water in the ponds]. When there's less salt, the Dunaliella survives and the ponds look brownish-red," Lilliam Casillas Martinez, a microbiologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, told Smithsonian magazine while explaining the colors of similar salt ponds in Puerto Rico. "During the dry season, it gets really salty. The Dunaliella dies and the archaea and bacteria take over. Then it becomes pink, pink, pink."

The pink color of most salt lakes is tied to the algae Dunaliella salina, such as in the Laguna Salada de Torrevieja (photographed) in southern Spain. (Image credit: Ayegül Kurt/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Locals mine up to 330,000 U.S. tons (300,000 metric tons) of salt from the flats of Salinas Las Barrancas twice a year, between the region's rainy seasons, according to a 2019 feature on the lake by Argentine news site La Nación. Most of this salt is replenished by the next major rainfall, and experts predict that mining will remain viable there for 5,000 years.

Mining is largely carried out using traditional processes, including scraping salt from the flats' surface with handheld tools. Workers must take precautions to protect their eyes and skin from intense sunlight that reflects off the pure white crystals. "The salt becomes part of your life," local worker Chepo told La Nación (translated from Spanish). "For someone else, it's a hellish place, but for me, the salt flats are my home; you get used to not being able to see."

Salinas Las Barrancas' high salinity means that not much can survive there. However, some salt-resistant vegetation does grow around the lake's edges, according to the Earth Observatory.

Yellow cardinals (left) and Chilean flamingos (right) both owe their striking colors to the carotenoids created by D. salina. Without these pigments, they would look very different, as evidenced by the juvenile flamingos in the second image. (Image credit: Left: Philippe Clement/Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images; right: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

It is also home to colorful birds, including vibrant yellow cardinals (Gubernatrix cristata) and bright-pink Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis). These birds feed on tiny crustaceans that are rich in carotenoids — organic pigments synthesized by plants, algae and bacteria.

These specific carotenoids come from the Dunaliella algae, which the tiny crustaceans feed on, and naturally produce both red and yellow pigments. Without these pigments in their diets from birth, both bird species would be different colors; yellow cardinals are naturally red, while flamingos are born grayish-white.

See more Earth from space

Sandbanks shine like auroras

A 2016 astronaut photo of the Bahamas shows a series of luminous, rippling sandbanks partly carved out by a coral reef. The image also reveals subtle differences in the ocean's surface caused by a steep, hidden ocean drop-off.

Glacier, lake and river 'touch'

A 2021 astronaut photo shows a triple valley system in Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park where a massive climate-resilient glacier, a pristine turquoise lake and a murky green "river" come together at a single point.

Ice swirls alongside Chicago

A 2025 satellite image shows a series of ghostly ice swirls sculpted on the surface of Lake Michigan by strong winds during an extreme cold snap that covered Chicago in a blanket of snow.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/astronaut-snaps-salty-pink-valentines-day-heart-shining-in-argentina-earth-from-space at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Psychedelics may rewire the brain to treat PTSD. Scientists are finally beginning to understand how.

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New research shows MDMA and psilocybin may restore neural flexibility in people with PTSD, thereby helping the brain unlearn fear and relearn safety.

Psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA may help people with PTSD. New research is beginning to unravel how they work. (Image credit: Sam Falconer for Live Science)

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For researcher Lynnette Averill, the quest to find a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is deeply personal. Averill's father served as an enlisted infantryman with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam and struggled to cope with his war experiences when he returned home. After years of ineffective treatments, he died by suicide when Averill was three.

Driven by a mission to support veterans' mental health, Averill trained as a psychologist and began working with people with PTSD — a condition that affects more than 12 million Americans in any given year. Victims of violence, abuse and accidents can experience post-traumatic symptoms such as persistent flashbacks, hypervigilance, and entrenched negative beliefs about themselves and their environment.

"People can be very stuck in black-and-white thinking, such as, 'I'm a bad person,' 'I deserve this,' 'the world is dangerous," Averill, a clinical research psychologist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said during a panel discussion at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver in June 2025.

Lynette Averill at a press event advocating for approving psychedelic drugs for therapeutic treatment of PTSD in veterans. She believes these drugs may have lifesaving potential. (Image credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. via Alamy)

Science Spotlight takes a deeper look at emerging science and gives you, our readers, the perspective you need on these advances. Our stories highlight trends in different fields, how new research is changing old ideas, and how the picture of the world we live in is being transformed thanks to science.

The root of these symptoms lie in how trauma shapes changes in the brain in the weeks and months after a frightening event. The brain's fear center — the amygdala — becomes hyperactive, constantly signaling danger, while the brain regions responsible for contextualizing memories and managing emotional responses become less active and less able to counterbalance those fear signals. Traditional therapies, such as antidepressant medications and trauma-focused psychotherapies, help only a fraction of patients and can take months to be effective.

"For many people with PTSD, they simply aren't enough, " Averill told Live Science.

Consequently, Averill is one of a group of researchers who are exploring a new potential avenue for treating PTSD: psychedelics. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, using MDMA or psilocybin, may act on the brain systems disrupted in PTSD, rather than simply treating the symptoms.

The early findings have been positive: A recent clinical trial showed that 67% of patients who received MDMA-assisted therapy no longer met PTSD criteria after treatment, compared with 32% in the placebo group, and clinical trials investigating psilocybin's potential to treat the condition are showing promise.

Averill is currently leading a pioneering Texas state-funded clinical trial investigating psilocybin for veterans with PTSD and has seen how quickly the drugs can act.

"There's potential for people to feel that the needle has moved in hours," Averill said. "And that is just quite literally lifesaving."

How trauma changes the brain

PTSD shares symptoms with depression and anxiety. Yet it is characterized by a response to a single trauma or set of traumatic events. Such experiences spark fear and often challenge an individual's core beliefs that the world is a just, safe and predictable place. People with PTSD can feel helpless and without agency.

It's normal for people who have endured traumatic events to experience these symptoms for a short time, and for most people, they resolve within a week or two, clinical psychologist Gregory Fonzo, a co-director of the Charmaine and Gordon McGill Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy at the University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School, told Live Science. But a subset of people get stuck.

"PTSD is essentially a disorder of nonrecovery," Fonzo said.

During the instigating event, trauma activates the brain's fear alarm system, including the amygdala, and signals a rapid release of stress hormones and neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine (noradrenaline). The higher levels of norepinephrine increase arousal and the physiological “fight or flight” response. The interaction of norepinephrine and corticotropin-releasing hormone modulates increases activity between the amygdala and hippocampus, reinforcing the synaptic connections that help store fear and vivid details of the event.

For the majority of people who recover quickly, this powerful fear response is successfully extinguished. The prefrontal cortex, the brain's regulatory control system, and the hippocampus, the brain's center for memory, exert top-down control and file the event as a past memory and no longer dangerous, which restores normal signaling in the amygdala.

For people who develop PTSD, however, the trauma creates more persistent changes in the brain, Dr. Jerrold Rosenbaum, a psychiatrist and director of the Center for Neuroscience of Psychedelics at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Live Science.

A 3D MRI reveals the limbic system (outlined in red), which plays a key role in PTSD. PTSD sufferers often have differences in the amygdala (awalnut-size region at the center of the brain) and the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped region below that. (Image credit: K H FUNG / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

In PTSD, the amygdala remains stuck in an overactive state, causing symptoms like hyperarousal, irritability and being easily startled. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex, which normally calms those alarms, becomes underactive, leaving the amygdala's overreactive fear response unchecked.

Neuroimaging has shown that PTSD is associated with a reduced volume of the hippocampus, which is the brain region that processes the context — the where, when and circumstances — of an event. In normal circumstances the hippocampus can discriminate between real and perceived danger. For example, it will categorize the sound of a car backfiring in an everyday environment differently than the blast of gunshot, which occurred specifically in a war zone. But a diminished hippocampus could make it harder for patients to distinguish between the two.

PTSD can definitely manifest in rigidity and entrenchment of ways of thinking about oneself and others in the world.

Brandon Weiss, Johns Hopkins Medical Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research

There's also evidence that PTSD is associated with changes in the connectivity of the default mode network (DMN), a set of interconnected brain regions that are highly active when a person is resting, their mind is wandering, or they are engaged in thinking about themselves or their memories rather than the outside world. Researchers hypothesize that heightened connectivity within the DMN is a neurobiological abnormality that pushes the system into overdrive, potentially leading to rumination or the involuntary re-experiencing of negative events (or flashbacks), which are characteristic symptoms of PTSD. In PTSD, the DMN also appears to be abnormally disconnected from the executive control regions and simultaneously abnormally connected with lower-level emotional systems, such as the amygdala. Scientists believe this increased coupling may drive intense, automatic emotions such as shame and guilt.

In a healthy brain, the prefrontal cortex can evaluate and change upsetting thoughts, but PTSD compromises this ability. PTSD is also associated with reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a signaling protein that is critical for neural plasticity — the formation of new synapses and the strengthening or pruning of existing neural connections. The deficit in BDNF effectively "locks" the trauma response in place and can prevent the brain from integrating new, non-fearful thinking, scientists theorize.

The result is a system trapped in fearful thinking and the past.

"PTSD can definitely manifest in rigidity and entrenchment of ways of thinking about oneself and others in the world," Brandon Weiss, a psychologist at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, told Live Science.

Treatment challenges

Physicians have used trauma-focused psychotherapy, such as cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and prolonged exposure (PE), to treat PTSD. In CPT, therapists guide patients to examine and change distorted thinking, such as the belief that they are to blame for events outside of their control. PE focuses on teaching the patient to reduce their fear by gradually confronting the traumatic memories in a controlled environment.

But these treatments are difficult for people to go through because they have to face the stuff that is really bothering them, Fonzo said. "So a lot of people drop out before they finish the treatment."

Access to specialized, trauma-focused therapists can be challenging, and not everyone benefits from such treatments, Fonzo said. Other treatment options include SSRIs, like sertraline (Zoloft) or paroxetine (Paxel), but only 20% to 30% of patients experience a remission on these drugs.

Most importantly, many patients feel like the medication hasn't addressed the root cause of their trauma, Rosenbaum said.

Creating a safe space to process trauma

For Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist and the associate chief of staff for research and development at San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, it was imperative to find effective treatments for military veterans suffering from PTSD.

"I see how debilitating it is for individuals that have served and have experienced combat," Mitchell told Live Science. "And we absolutely owe them to come up with better treatments."

Nearly a decade ago, Mitchell and her colleagues began to investigate whether MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), commonly known as ecstasy or molly, could treat PTSD when used in conjunction with psychotherapy. In 2023, the team published their findings on a diverse group of 104 participants with PTSD from the general population, 80% of whom had a history of contemplating suicide. By the end of the study, 71% of the participants who'd received MDMA no longer met the criteria for PTSD, and another 15% still had symptoms but had what the researchers termed a "clinically meaningful benefit."

A computer rendering of the molecular structure of MDMA. Early research suggests MDMA can help patients with PTSD recover from the disease. (Image credit: PROF. K.SEDDON & DR. T.EVANS, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BELFAST / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

MDMA's effectiveness hinges partly on its ability to act as a neuroplastogen — a compound that harnesses the brain's ability to form new connections and strengthen and reorganize existing connections. In the past few years, scientists have begun to explore the potential for another neuroplastogen to treat PTSD: psilocybin.

Clinical trials have found psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, to be a promising therapy for treatment-resistant anxiety and depression, and studies conducted on animals have pointed to its potential for treating PTSD.

A study on mature adult mice demonstrated that MDMA temporarily reopens a critical period for where the brain is sensitive to learning that social behaviors are beneficial by inducing structural and functional changes in the brain’s reward circuits. Specifically the drug makes the nucleus accumbens reward circuitry more sensitive to the social hormone oxytocin. This enhanced sensitivity allows the adult brain to re-encode social cues as intrinsically rewarding and safe, facilitating the re-learning of trust and attachment for up to two weeks after a single dose, the researcher theorize.

Mitchell has witnessed similar responses in humans and hypothesizes that the drug creates a neurobiological state in which patients can form a strong, trusting bond with a therapist. "There's a therapeutic window where people feel renewed energy, they don't feel so stuck, and they can actually work on the psychological side of their issues," Mitchell said.

Simultaneously, functional neuroimaging data points to MDMA's impacts on the fear circuitry of the brain. The drug decreases activity in the amygdala while increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex. MDMA also restores normal levels of BDNF in the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, theoretically leading to the formation of new synapses and structural changes that enable greater plasticity in these regions.

Researchers hypothesize that the dampening of the fear response, the enhancement of the prefrontal cortex's regulatory role, and the restoration of flexibility in key brain regions set the scene for patients to revisit and reprocess memories without being overwhelmed by fear. By entering therapy with this more regulated perspective, recovery can happen quickly.

"By the end of a treatment session, you can see that something has shifted. The subject will be holding themselves differently and look hopeful," Mitchell said. "I've been doing this type of research for 35 years, and it is the most remarkable thing that I've seen."

Once the patients have analyzed and processed their trauma, they are less likely to slip back into their PTSD symptoms after MDMA, Mitchell said. The researchers collected data on the patients in increments over the two years after their treatment ended, and the positive benefits appear to be durable, Mitchell said.

Breaking free

When a single dose of psilocybin was injected into chronically stressed mice that had developed learned helplessness and avoidance behaviors, for example, researchers could see immediate and enduring structural changes in the rodents' brains. The rapid increase in dendritic spines — the tiny protrusions that form synapses, the connections between brain cells —suggests that psilocybin may directly reverse the loss of neuronal connections observed in the frontal cortex of rodents subjected to chronic stress, the authors suggest. And the changes could prepare the brain for fear extinction and emotional processing —key elements of overcoming trauma.

Consequently, several trials are underway to investigate psilocybin as a treatment option for PTSD. In August 2025, biotechnology company Compass Pathways published its findings on a trial designed to test the safety of psilocybin for PTSD. The small safety study wasn't designed to measure effectiveness. Nevertheless, participants seemed to show an immediate reduction in PTSD symptoms after a single 25-milligram dose of the company's synthetic psilocybin. Clinicians reported the improvements had endured when tested 12 weeks later.

In the study Averill is leading, clinicians started dosing seven participants who had experienced PTSD symptoms for an average of 19 years at the start of the trial in February. The early findings "have been incredible," Averill said during a panel discussion at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver in June 2025.

Psilocybin is the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms." Research in animals suggests that the psychedelic substance may help erase fear memories and reduce neuronal loss in sensitive brain regions. (Image credit: KATERYNA KON / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

Within a few hours of the first dose of psilocybin, every single veteran reported positive changes in their beliefs and perceptions. After the treatment effects subsided, participants underwent therapy and said the drug enabled them to reevaluate their original traumatic experiences from a nonjudgmental perspective, without the shame and guilt, Averill said.

So how does psilocybin bring about these changes?

Studies in mice have demonstrated that, in a similar vein to MDMA, psilocybin helps brain cells grow new dendritic spines. These new branches appear in the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, the key regions responsible for learning, planning and memory.

But brain scans from people have shown that psilocybin simultaneously disrupts and desynchronizes, or dissolves, connectivity within the DMN for three weeks. Scientists hypothesize that this desynchronization of the brain system involved in self-referential processing results in a mind that is less constrained, more flexible and less consumed by self-reproach. They propose that the disruption of rigid cognitive patterns and negative thought loops may promote psychological flexibility and self-compassion.

"It has been surprising to see these maladaptive beliefs shift when I'd learned that change would only come about through longer term talk therapy," Weiss said.

Dissolving rigid thinking can open up the mind to new possibilities, including the idea that the patient wasn't responsible for the original trauma, Weiss said. Weiss is currently carrying out a clinical trial examining the effect of psilocybin therapy on the cognitive beliefs related to PTSD and is witnessing participants' experiences of the treatment.

"Many are endorsing less guilt and are able to let go of the sense that they were to blame for this happening," he said.

Proceeding cautiously, with haste

When Fonzo first reviewed the data on psychedelics as a treatment option in mental health, he was excited by what he found. But he pointed out that there haven't yet been any large, controlled studies evaluating psilocybin for PTSD. The research is still in its early stages with small pilot studies or clinical trials still assessing the safety of the drug. "There needs to be a sober perspective on what the evidence does, and does not show," Fonzo said, "because these treatments aren't necessarily going to be suitable for everyone."

Fonzo believes the answer lies in the expansion of funding for clinical trials, but research in psychedelics still faces steep hurdles. Both MDMA and psilocybin are listed as Schedule I substances in the U.S. — a federal classification reserved for drugs considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. That label makes studying them a bureaucratic nightmare, as researchers must navigate complex regulatory approvals and secure special licenses just to handle the compounds.

On top of that, every trial demands careful screening to find participants who meet the strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Also, due to the profound and unmistakable psychoactive effects of psychedelics, in trials, it can be hard to hide who is and isn't getting the drug and thus create a robust placebo group.

A homeless army veteran rests in a bed at a Homeless Services Center in Maine. Veterans often struggle with PTSD symptoms, and the current treatment options only help a fraction of those with the condition. (Image credit: Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Despite these challenges, new clinical trials are underway to explore variations in dosage, psychotherapy pairing and long-term outcomes. Weiss and his colleagues are investigating administering combinations of MDMA and psilocybin — so-called psychedelic stacking — and comparing the effectiveness of each treatment separately. "We're still learning about what is the most efficient and rapid-acting approach to helping people," Weiss said.

For veterans who are experiencing suicidal thoughts as part of their PTSD, finding interventions that spur rapid change could be key, Weiss said. Despite the compelling findings, the regulatory approval of psychedelic treatments for PTSD is moving slowly. In August 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined to approve MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, citing concerns over the study design and blinding procedures. Mitchell has been frustrated about the decision not to approve the treatment with guardrails, or for a subset of people who really need it.

"My own brain gets cranky when I hear people not consider PTSD a life-threatening condition — because it is," Mitchell said. In the United States in 2024, an average of 17 veterans died each day by suicide.

"That's why speed matters. We can't wait months for treatments that barely work," Mitchell said.

Averill has witnessed PTSD patients liberated by psychedelic therapy, but she cautioned that the psychedelic experience is not a "silver bullet" but rather one that opens the doors to healing. One veteran in the clinical trial she'd been leading described feeling like he'd been locked in a cage and said every movement felt painful. The psilocybin removed the cage, and he was able to revisit his traumatic experiences.

Averill's goal is to continue exploring how psychedelic-assisted therapy can help PTSD sufferers move beyond merely tolerating their existence. "We want to help people move forward and build lives they really want to be living," Averill said.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/mind/psychedelics-may-rewire-the-brain-to-treat-ptsd-scientists-are-finally-beginning-to-understand-how at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Anglo-Saxon children discovered buried with warrior gear in UK — perhaps as a nod to 'the men these children might have become'

Archaeologists have discovered Anglo-Saxon children buried with a spear, shield and buckles, gear that's usually seen in warriors' graves.

Uncovering the graves in the U.K. (Image credit: Duncan Sayer (no reuse))

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Four early Anglo-Saxon swords uncovered during a recent archaeological excavation I took part in each tell a story about how weapons were viewed at the time. There was also a striking discovery of a child buried with spear and shield. Was the child an underage fighter? Or were weapons more than mere tools of war to these people?

Weapons are embedded with values. Would, for example, the Jedi knights in the Star Wars franchise have as much nobility if they were armed with knives instead of light sabers? Today, modern armies fight remotely with missiles and drones, or mechanically with guns and armor. Yet in many countries, an officer still has a ceremonial sword, which worn incorrectly might even reveal an imposter.

The sword with a silver pommel gilt scabbard mouth. (Image credit: Duncan Sayer (no reuse))

The excavation, which I carried out with archaeologist Andrew Richardson, focused on an early medieval cemetery and our swords were found in graves. Our team from the University of Lancashire and Isle Heritage has excavated around 40 graves in total. The discovery can be seen in BBC2's Digging for Britain.

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One of the swords we uncovered has a decorated silver pommel (the rear part of the handle) and ring which is fixed to the handle. It is a beautiful, high status sixth-century object sheathed in a beaver fur lined scabbard. The other sword has a small silver hilt and wide, ribbed, gilt scabbard mouth — two elements with different artistic styles, from different dates, brought together on one weapon.

This mixture was also seen in the Staffordshire Hoard (discovered in 2009) which featured 78 pommels and 100 hilt collars with a range of dates from the fifth to the seventh centuries A.D.

In medieval times, swords — or their parts — were curated by their owners, and old swords were valued more highly than new ones.

The skeleton of a man and his sword discovered in the medieval cemetery. (Image credit: Duncan Sayer (no reuse))

The Old English poem Beowulf (probably composed between the eighth and early 11th century) describes old swords ("ealdsweord"), ancient swords ("gomelswyrd") and heirlooms ("yrfelafe"). As well as describing "waepen wundum heard" — "weapons hardened by wounds."

There are two sword riddles in the Exeter Book, a large codex of poetry written down in the 10th century (although the texts within it may describe earlier attitudes). In riddle 80, the sword describes itself: "I am a warrior's shoulder-companion". It's an interesting turn of phrase given our sixth century discoveries. In each case the hilt was placed at the shoulder and the arm of the deceased appeared to hug the weapon.

A comparable embrace has been seen in burials at Dover Buckland, also in Kent. There were two in Blacknall Field, Wiltshire, and one in West Garth Gardens, Suffolk. It is, however, unusual to see four people buried like this in one cemetery, and interestingly they were found in close proximity.

The part of the cemetery we have excavated includes several weapon burials placed around a deep grave with a ring ditch enclosing it. A small mound of earth would have been built over the top of the grave marking it out.

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The locations of the discoveries. (Image credit: Duncan Sayer (no reuse))

This earliest grave — the one that the others weapon graves used to guide their location — contained a man without metal artifacts or weapons. Weapon graves were more popular in the generations either side of the middle sixth century, so it is likely this person was buried before the fashion to dress the dead with weapons was established. Perhaps because during the tumultuous later fifth century and earliest years of the sixth century weapons were valued too highly for the defense of the living.

Our further discovery of a 10-12 year old child's grave with a spear and shield adds to this picture. The child's curved spine made it unlikely he could use these weapons comfortably.

A second grave of a younger child contained a large silver belt buckle. This looks to have been far too large to be worn by the boy who was just 2 to 3 years old. Graves with objects like these usually belong to adult men, large buckles were a symbol of office in later Roman and early Medieval contexts, for example the spectacular gold examples from Sutton Hoo.

The grave of a child was also discovered.  (Image credit: Duncan Sayer (no reuse))

So why were these objects found in the graves? Recent DNA results point to the importance of relatedness, particularly within the Y chromosome that denotes male ancestry.

At West Helsterton in east Yorkshire, DNA results point to a biological relationships between men buried in close proximity. Many of these men had weapons, including one with a sword and two spears. Many of the other male graves were placed around their heavily armed ancestor.

We are not saying that ancient weapons were purely ceremonial. Dents on shields, and wear on bladed weapons speak of practice and conflict. Injury and early death seen in skeletons testifies to the use of weapons in early medieval society and early English poetry speaks of grief and loss as much as heroism.

As Beowulf shows, feelings of loss were bound up in the display of the male dead and their weapons as well as fears for the future:

The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf, Beowulf's funeral

stacked and decked it until it stood four-square,

hung with helmets, heavy war-shields

and shining armor, just as he had ordered.

Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it,

mourning a lord far-famed and beloved.

The weapons in our graves were as much as an expression of loss and grief, as they were a physical statement about strength or masculinity and the male family. Even battle hardened and ancient warriors cried, and they buried their dead with weapons like swords that told stories.

The spear, shield and buckles found in little graves spoke of the men these children might have become.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/anglo-saxon-children-discovered-buried-with-warrior-gear-in-uk-perhaps-as-a-nod-to-the-men-these-children-might-have-become at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

'A second set of eyes': AI-supported breast cancer screening spots more cancers earlier, landmark trial finds

A clinical trial shows that AI-assisted mammography can detect more cases of dangerous cancer and reduce missed diagnoses.

A clinical trial suggests that an AI trained to look for signs of breast cancer can help radiologists spot more cancers, earlier, compared to unassisted radiologists. (Image credit: Getty Images)

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A first-of-its-kind trial demonstrates that AI-assisted mammography can improve the outcomes of patients with breast cancer, particularly those with aggressive disease.

While many people have only recently begun to use artificial intelligence (AI) in their everyday lives, the technology's use in medicine began about a decade ago, especially in the field of image-based diagnostics. Researchers have been training AI programs to recognize tumors and other signs of disease in various medical imagery, such as X-rays, MRIs, and tissue biopsies mounted on slides.

These images have been taken primarily from patients whose diagnoses were already known, in "retrospective" studies. Knowing the diagnosis enabled doctors to provide feedback to the AI, confirming that it correctly identified cancer or determined an image was cancer-free. These studies have shown that AI could be an invaluable tool in diagnostic medicine.

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However, to know if an AI tool can really diagnose cancer and make a difference to patients, you need to have a "prospective" study — one in which patients who are diagnosed using the AI tool are then followed for several years to determine their health outcomes.

Now, researchers in Sweden have conducted a gold-standard trial to assess the use of AI in mammography screening. Results from the Mammography Screening with Artificial Intelligence (MASAI) trial, published Jan. 31 in the journal The Lancet, showed that mammography reading supported by AI can improve screening performance while reducing radiologists' workload.

This is the first time AI has been shown to improve the outcomes of patients with breast cancer.

Spotting cancer earlier

The practice of regularly screening patients has significantly reduced the incidence of late-stage cancer and breast cancer deaths in much of the world. But even with regular mammograms, some cancer may go undetected.

These "interval cancers" are not detected at an initial screening but get diagnosed within the next two years, or between two screening rounds. They are often missed because they are masked during the initial screen due to breast-tissue density or the tumor disguising itself as normal tissue. Or sometimes, they can develop very quickly between screening dates.

These cancers are invasive, spreading into nearby healthy tissues, and typically aggressive, resulting in worse patient outcomes. Declines in interval cancer rates are the best way to confirm that a screening method works, meaning it drives down late-stage cancer diagnoses by spotting more cases earlier.

"If you want to improve the efficacy of screening, then the interval cancer rate is a very good surrogate measure of breast cancer mortality," senior study author Dr. Kristina Lång, a breast radiologist and clinical researcher at Lund University in Sweden, told Live Science. "So if we can lower the interval cancers, it will likely have a positive impact on patient outcomes."

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The MASAI trial included more than 100,000 women between the ages of 40 and 80 living in Sweden. It used a commercially available AI system that was trained on more than 200,000 examinations from medical institutions all over the world.

In a comparison group, mammograms were read by two radiologists, as is the standard in Sweden. In the AI-assisted group, the AI system analyzed mammograms for suspicious findings and provided a risk score of 1 to 10. Cases with a score of 1 to 9 were subsequently read by a single radiologist, while a score of 10 would be read by two radiologists. The AI system was also able to highlight the suspicious findings within the image so the human radiologists could easily review them.

The AI-supported screening identified more clinically relevant cancers than unassisted mammography did. "Clinically relevant" cancers are those that have the potential to progress and thus require medical intervention.

It also reduced the number of interval cancer diagnoses within the two years following the screen. This shows that the AI program was more effective at identifying cancers that might normally be missed by a human radiologist, allowing medical treatments to start earlier.

Reducing false positives

While cancer screening is mostly beneficial, there are some potential downsides, such as false positives and overdiagnosis. When a patient is called back for a recheck after a screening but does not have cancer, "that can be a really stressful experience," Lång said.

The latter situation, overdiagnosis, refers to situations where a screen detects a cancer that will ultimately cause no harm to the patient. Such cancers grow so slowly that they won't cause symptoms within a patient's lifetime or increase the chance of death. Overdiagnosis can subject healthy patients to unnecessary cancer treatments.

The goal of AI-assisted mammography is to improve the ability of the screening test to find cancer while mitigating these potential negative effects — and the study found that AI-assisted screening did not increase the risk of false positives and that it improved the detection of clinically relevant cancers.

Along with improving cancer detection, AI-assisted screenings could address the consistent shortage of radiologists available to provide cancer screening.

"In some places, you're lucky to find one radiologist to read the mammograms," said Dr. Richard Wahl, a radiation oncologist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the study. "If you don't have the expert radiologists, women can't benefit like they should from screening programs."

Additionally, as the few radiologists available work more hours, their performance decreases. But AI doesn't get tired, and its performance doesn't decline at the end of the workday.

"The workforce issue is real, and this [study] could have an impact," Wahl said. "I think people will gradually be interested in having AI-aided interpretation as a second set of eyes."

Lång and her team will be starting a screening trial in Ethiopia in March, during which they will use AI to support the rapid assessment of breast cancer using bedside ultrasounds within a screening program.

"The problem in these settings where they don't have a screening program is that many women come in with late-stage disease, and there are no radiologists there," Lång said. With AI support, Lång hopes to improve access to accurate screening and thus enable earlier diagnosis of breast cancer in these limited resource settings.

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Article Sources

Gommers, J., et al. (2026). Interval cancer, sensitivity, and specificity comparing AI-supported mammography screening with standard double reading without AI in the Masai study: A randomised, controlled, non-inferiority, single-blinded, population-based, screening-accuracy trial. The Lancet, 407(10527), 505–514. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(25)02464-x

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/cancer/a-second-set-of-eyes-ai-supported-breast-cancer-screening-spots-more-cancers-earlier-landmark-trial-finds at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

February 6, 2026

- Bandera Volcano Ice Cave: The weird lava tube in New Mexico whose temperature is always below freezing

- The 'mono' virus raises the risk of MS and cancer in some. 22 genes hint at why.

- Spotted lanternflies are invading the US. They may have gotten their evolutionary superpowers in China's cities.

- Black hole outburst named 'Jetty McJetface' is one of the most energetic objects in the universe

- Every major galaxy is speeding away from the Milky Way, except one — and we finally know why

- Kanzi the bonobo could play pretend — a trait thought unique to humans

- Saltwater crocodiles crossed the Indian Ocean to reach the Seychelles — before humans arrived and wiped them out

Bandera Volcano Ice Cave: The weird lava tube in New Mexico whose temperature is always below freezing

Due to a weird quirk of geology, New Mexico's Bandera Volcano Ice Cave never warms above 31 degrees Fahrenheit, even when temperatures outside exceed 100 F in summer.

Frigid conditions inside the Bandera Volcano Ice Cave have caused ice to grow there for at least 3,400 years. (Image credit: Zachary Frank via Alamy)

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The Bandera Volcano Ice Cave is a hollow in the ground in New Mexico where temperatures never exceed 31 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 0.6 degrees Celsius).

The cave formed roughly 10,000 years ago, when the nearby Bandera Volcano violently erupted, spewing lava that solidified at the surface while caverns formed in the layers below. The cave's unusual geology has preserved frigid conditions, which have caused ice to form inside it for at least 3,400 years.

The ice inside the Ice Cave is up to 20 feet (6 meters) thick on the floor year-round. Due to the freezing conditions, Arctic algae have colonized the cave, growing on top of the ice to form a blue-green, living blanket, according to the Ice Cave's website.

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One of New Mexico's Strangest Places - YouTube

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The cave is "one of New Mexico's weirdest spots, where it's both hot and cold all at the same time," Paul Mauermann, an environmental educator and director of New Mexico's Sandia Mountain Natural History Center, said in a video.

The Ice Cave is freezing because it is nestled inside a collapsed lava tube. Lava tubes are natural tunnels that form beneath surface lava flows during volcanic eruptions. Because surface flows are in contact with air, they cool and solidify more quickly than the lava flowing closer to the ground. As a result, when a volcano stops erupting, the core of a lava flow drains away while the outside hardens, leaving an empty conduit, or cave.

The Ice Cave has porous walls and an opening that's just the right shape to trap cold air inside the lava tube while keeping the warm air outside. This "natural icebox" is continually replenished through rainfall and snowmelt that freeze upon contact with the icy floor, according to the Ice Cave's website.

Bandera Volcano is also remarkable, as it represents one of the best and most accessible examples of a cinder cone volcanic eruption in North America. This type of eruption is short but explosive, with sprays of lava that crystallize in the air before landing on the ground. This results in steep cones covered in loose fragments that make it hard for anyone to climb some of the volcano's vents.

Bandera is now dormant. One of its vents collapsed during the eruption, forming a 800-foot-deep (240 m) crater that visitors can view from a breach on the south side. Lava likely flowed through this gap and into the valley below, forming a 23-mile-long (37 kilometers) river of molten rock that has since solidified into lava fields, according to the website.

Discover more incredible places, where we highlight the fantastic history and science behind some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/bandera-volcano-ice-cave-the-weird-lava-tube-in-new-mexico-whose-temperature-is-always-below-freezing at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

The 'mono' virus raises the risk of MS and cancer in some. 22 genes hint at why.

An infection with Epstein-Barr virus is a nonevent for most people. But for a subset, the virus can contribute to chronic conditions and cancer, and genes may play a role in that risk.

The Epstein-Barr virus infects most people, but in some, it raises the risk of chronic illnesses. Why? (Image credit: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

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Around 90% of people are infected with Epstein-Barr virus at some point in their lifetimes. For most of them, the virus causes a mild, transient illness or no symptoms at all. But for a subset of people, Epstein-Barr can eventually contribute to chronic illnesses, such as lupus and multiple sclerosis, or to the development of cancer.

Now, new research uncovers 22 human genes that might make an Epstein-Barr infection more likely to turn into a chronic condition.

Researchers can't yet definitively say whether these genes directly make Epstein-Barr more dangerous, or whether they are part of an underlying immune suppression that allows the virus to persist at higher levels in the body than usual. But the new study should provide a jumping-off point, said Jill Hollenbach, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

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"My lab is already looking into the results and thinking about what we can learn from this and what other avenues of research it suggests," Hollenbach told Live Science. Hollenbach wrote a commentary of the new study accompanying its Jan. 18 publication in the journal Nature.

Nearly two dozen genes

Epstein-Barr virus can cause mononucleosis, better known as mono, a temporary illness notable for producing extreme fatigue. But even once the symptoms of mono disappear, the virus lies latent in the body, mostly in the immune system's B cells, which remember and defend against specific germs.

For most people, this latent Epstein-Barr virus causes no problems. But in other people, the virus persists at a higher, more active level. In these cases, it can raise the risk of certain nasopharyngeal cancers and lymphomas, and may fuel autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis. Chronic, active Epstein-Barr has also been linked to heart and lung disease.

To understand why only some people seem to experience these chronic effects, Ryan Dhindsa at the Baylor College of Medicine and colleagues turned to an underexplored source of information: human DNA biobanks. These biobanks collect full gene sequencing data and health records for hundreds of thousands of individuals. In sequencing the human genome, they also happen to scoop up the DNA of any viruses that happen to be in residence inside cells.

"Typically, when we're analyzing human genome sequence data we ignore the reads that don't map back to a human reference genome. We just kind of throw them away," Dhindsa told Live Science. "Here, we decided maybe we could go through those reads that we normally throw away and see if we could recover viral DNA."

By combing through tossed-aside Epstein-Barr sequences from 750,000 people in the UK Biobank and the U.S. National Institutes of Health's All of Us biobank, the researchers were able to identify individuals — about 11% of the total — who had very high levels of Epstein-Barr DNA. They found that these high levels of viral DNA were associated with health conditions previously linked to Epstein-Barr, including diseases of the spleen and Hodgkin lymphoma.

The presence of viral DNA was also associated with conditions thought to be linked to Epstein-Barr, although less definitively: rheumatoid arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lupus. Other associations in the data reinforce even less well-studied connections, including links between Epstein Barr and heart disease, kidney failure, stroke and depressive episodes.

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In addition, the researchers found 22 genes tied to a higher likelihood that someone would be in the 11% of people with chronic Epstein-Barr. Many of these genes were in a region of the genome called the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) locus, which is known to code for the immune cells that present antigens — immune-response-triggering foreign molecules — to other immune cells.

"It seems like these variants changed the way an individual's immune response actually presents Epstein-Barr virus to the immune system," Dhindsa said, possibly making it harder for the body to suppress viral replication. That said, the data has only shown a link between these genes and persistent infection — more research is needed to prove cause-and-effect.

In people with high levels of Epstein-Barr, the researchers also saw variations in genes that regulate the immune system. One, the SLAMF7 gene, typically encodes for a cell-surface protein that helps the immune system's natural killer cells attack tumors. Another, called CTLA4, encodes for a receptor on T cells that helps keep the immune system from attacking the body.

"They found some really interesting results," Hollenbach said.

She and her team are now interested in looking deeper at the mechanisms that link the genetic variation to the immune response to Epstein-Barr. Meanwhile, Dhindsa and his colleagues are interested in using biobank data to search for other viruses that have long-term impacts on human health. Some examples are the cancer-causing viruses Merkel cell polyomavirus and human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1.

The researchers are also eager to expand their methods to more diverse global datasets of human genes. While the All of Us dataset includes participants from a variety of backgrounds, the U.K. Biobank is predominantly made up of people of European ancestry.

"We need to be able to look at genetic differences across more representative samples in future work," he said.

Article Sources

Nyeo, S. S., Cumming, E. M., Burren, O. S., Pagadala, M. S., Gutierrez, J. C., Ali, T. A., Kida, L. C., Chen, Y., Chu, H., Hu, F., Zou, X. Z., Hollis, B., Fabre, M. A., MacArthur, S., Wang, Q., Ludwig, L. S., Dey, K. K., Petrovski, S., Dhindsa, R. S., & Lareau, C. A. (2026). Population-scale sequencing resolves determinants of persistent EBV DNA. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-10020-2

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/health/viruses-infections-disease/the-mono-virus-raises-the-risk-of-ms-and-cancer-in-some-22-genes-hint-at-why at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Spotted lanternflies are invading the US. They may have gotten their evolutionary superpowers in China's cities.

The alarming spread of spotted lanternflies across the U.S. has been made possible by cities acting as evolutionary incubators, fine-tuning the insects and enabling them to thrive.

The invasive spotted lanternfly feeds on tree sap with its piercing mouthparts. (Image credit: Rolf Karlsson/Getty Images)

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The spotted lanternfly has spread across the United States with unrelenting speed — and now we have a clue as to why: living in cities seems to have helped these invasive insects evolve to be more resistant to stresses.

"Cities may act as evolutionary incubators that help an invasive species to better deal with pressures like heat and pesticides, which then helps them to better adapt to new environments," lead author Fallon (Fang) Meng, a biologist at New York University, told Live Science.

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is a planthopper that uses its long mouthparts to suck sap from plants. The insect is native to China, but has spread through South Korea, Japan and to the U.S., where it was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014, but is now seen in 19 states in the eastern U.S.

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Its preferred host plant is the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), which is also an invasive species — but it is able to sup on a wide range of plants, including economically valuable ones like grapevines, hops, maples, fruit trees and hardwood trees.

Spotted lanternflies can weaken plants, and as they feed, they also excrete a sticky, sugary fluid that promotes the growth of sooty mold. What's more, when bees decide to forage on this sugary waste rather than visiting flowers it gives the honey they produce a smoky aroma and a lingering aftertaste, although this honey is still safe to eat.

All this adds up to a potentially huge financial impact. For example, a 2019 study estimated that in Pennsylvania alone, if uncontrolled, the insect's effects could cost $324 million annually.

A spotted lanternfly in Shanghai. Some lanternflies in their native China have partially blue wings, unlike the gray seen on those that have invaded the U.S. (Image credit: Fallon Meng/NYU)

Lanternfly genetics

To get a better handle on how the lanternflies have adapted so well to life in the United States, researchers sequenced the genomes of lanternflies from urban and rural areas in Shanghai, China, and from New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey. The study was published Wednesday (Feb. 4) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

In the lanternfly populations in China, they found clear genetic differences between those in the urban and rural areas. "Even though they're just 30 kilometers [19 miles] away, they have very strong population differentiation," Meng said.

This is probably because although lanternflies can fly, they need to feed continuously, so they stick close to the host trees on which they depend. This means it is easy for populations to stay separate, Meng added.

This separation means the urban lanternflies in Shanghai evolved genetic tolerance to stresses that the rural ones didn't, adapting them to the hotter conditions of cities, and boosting their ability to detoxify and metabolize toxins and pesticides.

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In the U.S., however, the lanternflies were genetically similar across all locations, even though some were sourced from locations 124 miles (200 kilometers) apart. The same genes that evolved for city living were further adapted in U.S. populations, according to the study.

Using demographic modeling on the genomic data to reconstruct the recent history of the lanternflies, researchers revealed three genetic bottlenecks, when populations were established from a limited pool of insects. One was more than 170 years ago, when Shanghai underwent rapid urbanization. The second aligned with when lanternflies moved from China to South Korea in 2004, and the third was in 2014 when the insects arrived in Pennsylvania — probably hitchhiking on goods shipped from overseas.

Adapting to China's cities may have primed the lanternfly to tolerate other hot, polluted environments, Meng said. "We should study invasive species and urbanization as interconnected parts of a whole. Those two major aspects are too often studied in isolation, but their effects actually can compound in synergistic and surprising ways."

The ability to handle a wider range of toxins might be helping spotted lanternflies spread in the U.S., said Zach Ladin, an ecologist at the University of Delaware, who wasn't involved in the study.

The relatively high densities of tree of heaven give spotted lanternflies a foothold in many cities, he told Live Science, "but some of those genes that they found that are related to overcoming toxic chemical exposure could really help them switch hosts and take advantage of other plants."

Ladin added that the new genetic information could help people slow or contain the spread of spotted lanternflies. "From a chemical control perspective, now we have some genes to target which could be important in making sure we're not just driving resistance to certain chemicals," he said.

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/animals/insects/spotted-lanternflies-are-invading-the-us-they-may-have-gotten-their-evolutionary-superpowers-in-chinas-cities at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Black hole outburst named 'Jetty McJetface' is one of the most energetic objects in the universe

Scientists say a jet from a previously studied supermassive black hole has grown brighter, becoming one of the most energetic events in the universe.

An illustration of a black hole shredding a star and releasing an energy jet. The powerful 'Jetty McJetface' feature was discovered in one such system. (Image credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab)

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A jet from a supermassive black hole is getting more energetic with time, and is now believed to be one of the most energetic objects in the universe.

The jet — nicknamed "Jetty McJetface" — is emanating from a black hole that was previously studied in 2022, after it picked up a star and began shredding it to pieces, releasing the jet in the process. Now, some four years later, that bout of "cosmic indigestion" is still going strong, researchers said.

"This is really unusual," Yvette Cendes, an astrophysicist at the University of Oregon who led the study published Feb. 5 in the Astrophysical Journal, said in a statement. "I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything rising like this over such a long period of time."

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Many such star-shredding events have been spotted before, when a star gets too close to the gravitational field to a black hole and is violently torn apart in a process called "spaghettification." But such energy from spaghettification has never been seen before, Cendes said.

Cendes has a long affiliation with the black hole, formally known as AT2018hyz. (Her nickname for it, Jetty McJetface, is a pun on the British research vessel Boaty McBoatface, whose name was chosen by a viral Internet poll about 10 years ago.)

Cendes and her colleagues discovered the black hole in 2018, before publishing a paper in 2022 on the black hole's star-shredding behavior. Analysis of the radio waves blasting out of Jetty reveal that he black hole is roughly 50 times brighter than it was in 2019, emitting at least a trillion times the equivalent energy of the fictional Death Star of the "Star Wars" universe, according to the researchers.

New predictions suggest that the radio waves coming from the black hole will keep rising exponentially before peaking sometime in 2027.

Also, the team suggests the spaghettified star's radiation is blasting away from the black hole in a single direction, and likely not aimed at Earth. That may explain why the star wasn't seen near the black hole at first glance. But the team says more data will be required to verify that theory.

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IN CONTEXT

Brandon Specktor

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Space and Physics editor

"Even without cute nicknames like 'Jetty McJetface,' black hole jets are major venues for astrophysical discoveries. Not only do they teach us more about the baffling behavior of black holes — like M87 (the first black hole to ever be imaged) — but they are also some of the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe, firing out matter at energy levels unattainable on Earth. Studying them could help shed light on the true nature of dark matter and other elusive particles."

Article Sources

Y. Cendes et al. (2026). Continued Rapid Radio Brightening of the Tidal Disruption Event AT2018hyz. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae286d

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/black-holes/black-hole-outburst-jetty-mcjetface-is-one-of-the-most-energetic-objects-in-the-universe-and-only-growing-brighter at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Every major galaxy is speeding away from the Milky Way, except one — and we finally know why

A vast, flat sheet of dark matter may solve the long-standing mystery of why our neighboring galaxy Andromeda is speeding toward us while our other neighbors are moving away from us.

A view of the potential merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda as it may appear in Earth's night sky in 3.75 billion years. (Image credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger)

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The structure of the local universe is surprisingly flat, according to new research, and this cosmic quirk may save our Milky Way from colliding with countless other massive, nearby galaxies — except one.

For decades, astronomers have made the puzzling observation that our nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda, is speeding toward a possible collision with our galaxy, while other nearby galaxies are moving away from us. Now, a new study may finally reveal why: A vast, flat sheet of dark matter is drawing those galaxies into deep space.

Dark matter anchors and attracts visible matter, and the gravitational pull from the far-out dark matter sheet, which lies slightly beyond the bounds of Andromeda and the Milky Way, overwhelms the attraction between our galaxy and other neighboring galaxies, researchers reported in a paper published Jan. 27 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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"The observed motions of nearby galaxies and the joint masses of the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy can only be properly explained with this 'flat' mass distribution," the researchers said in a statement.

Future simulations could further explain how gravity sculpts our surroundings and why the local universe looks the way it does.

Going with the flow

The motion of galaxies throughout the expanding fabric of space-time is known as the Hubble flow. It's mathematically described by Hubble's law, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered the expansion of the universe in the 1920s. His eponymous law constrains an observational phenomenon: Galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds that are proportional to their distance. The farther a galaxy is from our vantage point, the faster it seems to be receding.

So why is Andromeda, located 2.5 million light-years away, hurtling toward us at 68 miles per second (110 kilometers per second), while most other large, nearby galaxies are following the flow? Curiously, these receding galaxies appear to resist the immense gravitational attraction of our Local Group, which includes the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Triangulum Galaxy and dozens of gravitationally bound, smaller galaxies.

This universal enigma has endured for more than half a century. In 1959, astronomers Franz Kahn and Lodewijk Woltjer found evidence of dark matter situated around Andromeda and the Milky Way. They calculated that to reverse the initial expansion imparted by the Big Bang, these two galaxies would require a combined mass much greater than all their stars put together.

It turns out that a significant portion of the mass of the Milky Way and Andromeda is contained in dark matter halos that surround each galaxy and facilitate the galaxies' rapid approach toward each other.

However, this attraction does not seem to affect nearby galaxies outside the Local Group, where "material is actually moving away from the Milky Way faster than the Hubble flow," study co-author Simon White, director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, said in a statement.

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"Thus, galaxies closer than [roughly 8 million light-years] are moving away from us slower than predicted by Hubble's Law, whereas galaxies farther than [that] are actually receding faster than predicted," White told Live Science via email.

The average distribution of dark matter in the local universe, showing Andromeda and the Milky Way as the two bright-orange blobs at center and the 31 nearby galaxies outside the Local Group as cyan dots. The left image looks down on the flat sheet of dark matter and galaxies, while the right image views it from the side. (Image credit: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)

Building a universe from scratch

To find out why, the researchers built their own universe. They ran a multitude of simulations to explore the interactions among dark matter, our Local Group, and the receding galaxies just outside it, to a distance of around 32 million light-years.

The simulations modeled the evolution of the local universe from the beginning of space-time, starting with the mass distributions observed in the cosmic microwave background, the oldest light in the cosmos, emitted when the universe was just 380,000 years old. The researchers then had the model reproduce certain salient characteristics observed in nearby galaxies, including the mass, position and velocity of Andromeda and the Milky Way, as well as the positions and velocities of 31 galaxies located just outside the Local Group.

This revealed that the mass just slightly beyond the Local Group, including both dark matter and visible matter, is distributed in a vast, flat sheet that stretches for tens of millions of light-years and continues beyond the boundaries of the simulation.

Because nearby galaxies are embedded in this flattened sheet of dark matter, any gravitational pull from our Local Group is counteracted by the gravitational pull from the more distant mass in the sheet, drawing them away from us.

"If the mass were distributed approximately spherically around the Local Group, rather than being flat, then the external galaxies would be moving away from us slower than predicted by Hubble's law for the cosmic expansion, because they would be slowed down by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and Andromeda," White told Live Science. "Instead, the flattened distribution of the surrounding matter pulls these galaxies outwards in a way which almost exactly compensates for the inward pull of the [Milky Way] and [Andromeda]."

Equally important, the regions above and below the sheet are devoid of galaxies. Such sparse regions occur throughout the cosmos, and the deep Local Voids around our Local Group formed in areas where the initial density of the universe was a bit lower than average.

"As a result these regions expanded faster than average, and their matter was 'pushed' outwards," White said via email. "By the present day these low-density regions fill most of space and gravitational effects have concentrated most of their material into the 'walls' that separate them."

Reconciling experiments, observations and models

The location of the voids is essential. These sparse regions are where any existing structures would fall toward the Local Group; any galaxies there would indeed be moving toward us. So we don't see any other objects careening toward the Milky Way, as Andromeda is doing, because there simply aren't any galaxies there to do so.

Overall, when accounting for the vast sheet of mass, the simulations accurately modeled the distribution of nearby galaxies and the voids, thereby reconciling experimental results with astronomical observations of galactic motions as well as with the leading model of cosmology, known as lambda cold dark matter.

"We are exploring all possible local configurations of the early universe that ultimately could lead to the Local Group," lead study author Ewoud Wempe, a cosmologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said in a different statement. "It is great that we now have a model that is consistent with the current cosmological model on the one hand, and with the dynamics of our local environment on the other."

Interestingly, the researchers report that high-latitude galaxies farther out in the cosmos have been observed to be falling toward the flat sheet of matter at several hundred kilometers per hour. Finding additional structures infalling from the directions of the voids could lend further support to the results of this study.

Article Sources

Wempe, E., White, S. D. M., Helmi, A., Lavaux, G., & Jasche, J. (2026). The mass distribution in and around the Local Group. Nature Astronomy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02770-w

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/every-major-galaxy-is-speeding-away-from-the-milky-way-except-one-and-we-finally-know-why at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Kanzi the bonobo could play pretend — a trait thought unique to humans

Past anecdotal observations have hinted that great apes play pretend. But now, experimental research shows that our closest living relatives can keep track of imaginary objects.

Kanzi consistently identified the correct location of the pretend juice and grape. (Image credit: Ape Initiative)

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For the first time, scientists have experimentally shown bonobos (Pan paniscus), our closest living relatives along with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), can engage in pretend play — something previously assumed to be unique to humans.

Just like 2-year-old children can, Kanzi, a unique bonobo who could understand English, kept track of imaginary juice and grapes during pretend tea parties, according to a study published Thursday (Feb. 5) in the journal Science.

Although Kanzi, who died in March 2025, did not initiate the pretend play, his ability to follow along shows he had some of the mental building blocks needed to imagine pretend objects and scenarios.

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"We were really in awe at this finding," study co-author Christopher Krupenye, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University, told Live Science. "What we're seeing in this case is that … something that seems to be fundamentally human and is emerging early in our human development is also shared with our closest relatives," he said.

This suggests the human capacity to imagine objects that aren't really there could have evolved before humans and bonobos split from our last common ancestor over 6 million years ago, Krupenye said.

Imagined realities

Previous anecdotal evidence has hinted that captive and wild great apes engage in pretend play. For example, a wild 3-year-old chimpanzee in Guinea was observed playing with a discarded human-made leaf cushion by placing it on his head. A captive bonobo also "picked" and "ate" blueberries from a photograph of real blueberries.

But because the anecdotal examples could be explained by alternative explanations, such as the apes believing the pretend objects were actually real, Krupenye and his colleague Amalia Bastos, a comparative psychologist at the University of St Andrews in the U.K., wanted to bring the question of "can animals really pretend?" into a controlled, experimental setting.

Because Kanzi could understand and respond to English, he was the obvious first animal to study, Krupenye said.

First, Kanzi was trained to point to the vessel containing juice. He was shown two see-through bottles, one containing juice and the other empty, and he was asked to point out where the juice was. If he answered correctly, he was rewarded with some of the juice. Kanzi got a perfect score over the 18 repeats of this training phase.

In the test trials, an experimenter placed two transparent empty cups side-by-side on a table in front of Kanzi. Next, they pretended to pour juice from an empty jug into each cup, then poured the pretend juice from one of the cups back into the jug. Kanzi was then asked to point to the location of the cup with the juice, but he was never told if he was correct, and wasn't rewarded.

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Kanzi correctly identified the location of the pretend juice 68% of the time, which suggested he could keep track of the imaginary liquid.

Kanzi passed away aged 44 in March 2025. (Image credit: Ape Initiative)

But the possibility remained that he simply thought the empty cup actually contained real juice. To check if this was the case, the team ran a second experiment where they placed a juice-filled cup and an empty cup on a table. They pretended to pour juice into the empty cup and then held the empty jug over the full cup without doing the pouring motion.

Krupenye said that if Kanzi really thought there was juice in both cups, he would have chosen them at equal frequency. But, when asked which cup he wanted, Kanzi selected the cup containing real juice 77.8% of the time, suggesting he could clearly distinguish real from imaginary juice.

"That sort of gave us confidence that we were really looking at some ability to track imaginary or pretend objects," Krupenye said.

Bastos said she was still a little skeptical at this point — Kanzi's ability to point out where the pretend juice was could have been a fluke. So the team repeated the same procedure but with a pretend grape. Kanzi correctly identified the location of the imaginary grape in 68.9% of trials.

"By the time we finished experiment three, I was very confident that what we saw was what we saw," Bastos said.

The research is limited as only one bonobo was tested, but is nonetheless the first clear evidence that great apes can engage in pretend play, Laura Simone Lewis, an evolutionary anthropologist and psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email.

"This is a huge development for our field, because it provides direct evidence to support the anecdotal reports from the wild that our great ape cousins can use their imaginations for all sorts of activities, including pretend play," she said.

This research demonstrates that Kanzi could understand shared pretense created by humans, but not that he could produce pretend scenarios himself.

"I think it would be a big leap to say that, because of this, in some sense we're seeing something comparable to what we see in 2-year-old children, where you typically routinely see pretense production including things like drinking from empty cups and so forth," Paul Harris, a psychologist at Harvard University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.

Krupenye and Bastos hope that pretend play can now be explored in other great apes. "If the anecdotes are right, it should be the case that other apes also share this capacity," Krupenye said.

Article Sources

Bastos, A. P. M., & Krupenye, C. (2026). Evidence for representation of pretend objects by Kanzi, a language trained bonobo. Science, 391 (6785). http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adz0743

Primates Quiz: What do you know about our closest relatives?

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/kanzi-the-bonobo-could-play-pretend-a-trait-thought-unique-to-humans at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Saltwater crocodiles crossed the Indian Ocean to reach the Seychelles — before humans arrived and wiped them out

A DNA study reveals crocs that lived in the Seychelles represented the westernmost population of saltwater crocodiles, having swam at least 1,800 miles to reach the island.

New study finds saltwater crocodiles used to be in a lot more places than they are today. (Image credit: Getty Images)

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Saltwater crocodiles used to occupy a massive range that stretched across the Indian Ocean to the Seychelles, new DNA research confirms.

The now-extinct population of crocodiles in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, was not a group of Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus), nor was it a separate species. Instead, it was likely the westernmost population of saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus), which today live in India, Southeast Asia, Australia and islands across the Western Pacific, researchers reported Jan. 28 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

"The founders of the Seychelles population must have drifted at least 3,000 kilometers [1,864 miles] across the Indian Ocean to reach the remote archipelago, perhaps even much further," study co-author Frank Glaw, a reptile expert at the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History, said in a statement.

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The Seychelles used to be home to a large population of crocodiles, according to expedition notes from more than 250 years ago. But when human settlers arrived in the late 18th century, they wiped out all of the crocodiles on the islands. The remains of a few specimens were kept in museums in the Seychelles, London and Paris.

Initially, Western scientists thought the Seychelles crocodiles were part of a population of Nile crocodiles that had migrated from Africa. But in 1994, researchers reclassified the preserved remains as saltwater crocodiles based on their physical traits.

In the new study, a different team of scientists confirmed that conclusion using genetic material. They collected mitochondrial DNA from the skulls and teeth of several older museum specimens of various crocodile species and then compared that DNA with tissue samples from modern museum specimens and living crocodiles.

Sampling the Seychelles crocodiles. Three incomplete skulls from the Seychelles National Museum are among the few preserved remains of the Seychelles crocodiles. (Image credit: Kathrin Glaw)

The genetic markers of the Seychelles crocodiles matched closely with those of the saltwater crocodiles, the team found. That suggests that saltwater crocodiles' range stretched over 7,500 miles (12,000 km) from east to west before the Seychelles population was exterminated.

"The genetic patterns suggest that saltwater crocodile populations remained connected over long periods and across great distances, pointing to the high mobility of this species," study co-author Stefanie Agne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Potsdam in Germany, said in the statement.

To spread as far west as the Seychelles, C. porosus would have had to cross thousands of miles of ocean. But the crocodiles are adapted to life at sea, sporting special salt glands on their tongues that let them expel excess salt. That adaptation could have helped the animals spread widely across the Indo-Pacific region and limited further speciation, the researchers wrote in the study.

But future work could still uncover differences among groups of saltwater crocodiles. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, and it might not capture subtle genetic differences driven by male crocodiles. Future studies using DNA from the nuclei of crocodile cells could help unpack any regional differences among populations, the researchers wrote.

Article Sources

Agne, S., Arnold, P., Belle, B., Straube, N., Hofreiter, M., & Glaw, F. (2026). Mitogenomic Crocodylia phylogeny and population structure of Crocodylus porosus including the extinct Seychelles crocodile. Royal Society Open Science, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251546

This article was downloaded from https://www.livescience.com/animals/alligators-crocodiles/saltwater-crocodiles-crossed-the-indian-ocean-to-reach-the-seychelles-before-humans-arrived-and-wiped-them-out at Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM EST.

Table of Contents

Live Science: 2026 Feb 10

February 10, 2026

Sandals of Tutankhamun: 3,300-year-old footwear that let King Tut walk all over his enemies

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Something supercharged Uranus with radiation during Voyager flyby 40 years ago. Scientists now know what.

New 'sungrazing' comet could become visible to the naked eye during the day — if the sun doesn't destroy it

Only certain types of brain-training exercises reduce dementia risk, large trial reveals

'There's no reason to ban us from playing': Analysis debunks notion that transgender women have inherent physical advantages in sports

Scientists infiltrated volunteers' dreams to boost their creative thinking

CT scans reveal the last moments of Inca children sacrificed as 'messengers to the gods'

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Should you buy a new or used camera for astrophotography?

Paleo-Inuit people braved icy seas to reach remote Greenland islands 4,500 years ago, archaeologists discover

Microbes in Iceland are hoarding nitrogen, and that's mucking up the nutrient cycle

February 9, 2026

Physicists push quantum boundaries by turning a superfluid into a supersolid — and back — for the first time

Dramatic death of Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) caught on camera — Space photo of the week

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Impossibly powerful 'ghost particle' that slammed into Earth may have come from an exploding black hole — and it could upend both particle physics and cosmology

The best toddler-friendly air purifier we have tested is now at its lowest-ever price

Astronaut snaps salty, pink Valentine's Day 'heart' shining in Argentina — Earth from space

Psychedelics may rewire the brain to treat PTSD. Scientists are finally beginning to understand how.

Anglo-Saxon children discovered buried with warrior gear in UK — perhaps as a nod to 'the men these children might have become'

'A second set of eyes': AI-supported breast cancer screening spots more cancers earlier, landmark trial finds

February 6, 2026

Bandera Volcano Ice Cave: The weird lava tube in New Mexico whose temperature is always below freezing

The 'mono' virus raises the risk of MS and cancer in some. 22 genes hint at why.

Spotted lanternflies are invading the US. They may have gotten their evolutionary superpowers in China's cities.

Black hole outburst named 'Jetty McJetface' is one of the most energetic objects in the universe

Every major galaxy is speeding away from the Milky Way, except one — and we finally know why

Kanzi the bonobo could play pretend — a trait thought unique to humans

Saltwater crocodiles crossed the Indian Ocean to reach the Seychelles — before humans arrived and wiped them out