Science News: Recent scientific discoveries and expert analysis

There is currently a 4.3% chance that the giant space rock 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in seven years. If this does happen, debris from the nuclear bomb-like impact could trigger a "spectacular" meteor shower that will endanger Earth-orbiting satellites.

Scientists have determined that slowing ocean currents are responsible for a cold spot south of Greenland.

Excavations in Egypt's Nile Delta have revealed ancient Egyptian multistory "tower" houses, a ceremonial building dedicated to the goddess Wadjet, a granary and several stunning artifacts.

There will be several chances to see the shadow of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, pass across the ringed planet's Earth-facing surface over the next few months. The rare spectacle is only visible every 15 years.

In goal-driven scenarios, advanced language models like Claude and Gemini would not only expose personal scandals to preserve themselves, but also consider letting you die, research from Anthropic suggests.

Giant ceramic pots made centuries to millennia ago were found to hold human bones, while others held a mixture of seeds and the remains of fish, frogs and turtles.

Scientists have detected rhythmic pulses of molten rock rising beneath eastern Africa, threatening to pull the continent apart.

Using the XMM-Newton telescope, astronomers have witnessed high-speed "burps" erupting from a distant overfeeding supermassive black hole.

The "heat dome" hovering over the eastern half of the U.S. now has a thunderstorm "ring of fire" erupting along its edge. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, the first tropical storm of the season has been named.

A closer look at the burial of a man born of incest 5,000 years ago reveals he was unlikely to have been a god-king.

A new study lends support to the notion that JuMBOs (Jupiter-mass binary objects) discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023 may be fiction rather than fact.

A new analysis of a carved mammoth tusk first discovered four decades ago reveals it may be the world's oldest boomerang.

Nestled inside a planetary ring 110 light-years from Earth, a planet spotted by the James Webb telescope is the lightest exoplanet ever detected.

Scientists have found that a deadly tomb fungus called Aspergillus flavus may hold the key to promising new treatments for leukemia.

Scientists in Australia have developed a quantum control chip that removes a key obstacle to getting qubits into practical, real-world computing systems.

Last year, astronomers detected a powerful burst of radio waves from within our galaxy. Researchers now say it came from NASA's defunct Relay 2 satellite — but they're not sure what caused it.

Scientists have developed a material with photosynthetic bacteria that convert carbon dioxide into a mineral skeleton. The material hardens over time, so it could be used for buildings, they say.

A coronal hole in the sun could result in visible auroras over about 15 U.S. states tonight (June 25), with the Space Weather Prediction Center expecting a moderate geomagnetic storm.

After years of study, scientists have discovered a new blood type in a woman from Guadeloupe. They're now searching for more people with the characteristic.

Scientists have built a compact physical qubit with built-in error correction, and now say it could be scaled into a 1,000-qubit machine that is small enough to fit inside a data center. They plan to release this machine in 2031.