Science News: Recent scientific discoveries and expert analysis

The rocks could offer insight into Earth's primordial crust and the environment that gave birth to life.

Using gravitational microlensing, scientists have discovered a rare, large planet at the edge of the Milky Way. The planet is only the third to be found on the outskirts of our galaxy's dense central bulge.

NASA's Chandra Observatory has combined different wavelength images of the Andromeda galaxy to honor astronomer Vera Rubin, and then created a music video by converting the light in those images to musical notes.

Footage captures a pair of orcas nibbling each other's tongues in the Kvænangen fjords in northern Norway. Scientists think this rarely seen behavior could play a role in social bonding.

Surprising colors and stunning features are captured in a new image of Mars' surface.

Researchers have successfully demonstrated quantum speedup in kernel-based machine learning.

The founders of the Microbiota Vault, a project that aims to preserve microbial diversity, have announced that they are ready to grow their frozen microbe collection to 10,000 samples by 2029.

Genetic analysis of skeletons buried in a Neolithic proto-city in Turkey reveals that female lineages were important in early agricultural societies.

The discovery of Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, a dog-size "runner" dinosaur, has left researchers re-evaluating Nanosaurus and several other US dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation in Colorado.

Researchers in China have developed a way of locating giant "equatorial plasma bubbles" in the ionosphere by analyzing the vibrant airglow that forms above them. The findings could help avoid potential disasters in air travel and emergency response situations.

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.