Teens who sleep in on weekends may be giving their mental health a boost. A new study found that young people who made up for lost weekday sleep had a significantly lower risk of depression. While consistent sleep is still best, weekend catch-up sleep appears to offer
Dogs began diversifying thousands of years earlier than previously believed, with clear differences in size and shape appearing over 11,000 years ago. A massive global analysis of ancient skulls shows that early dogs were already adapting to different roles in human societies.
Earthquakes happen daily, sometimes with devastating consequences, yet predicting them remains out of reach. What scientists can do is map the hidden layers beneath the surface that control how strongly the ground shakes. A new approach speeds up complex seismic simulations by
Lush green fields of alfalfa spread across thousands of acres in a desert valley in western Arizona, where a dairy company from Saudi Arabia grows the thirsty crop by pulling up groundwater from dozens of wells.
A familiar mouth bacterium best known for causing cavities may also be quietly influencing the brain. Scientists found that when this microbe settles in the gut, it produces compounds that can travel through the bloodstream and harm neurons involved in movement. In animal
A research team led by Kuang Guangli and Jiang Donghui at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHMFL), has developed a "pocket-type" high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil, achieving a record
Environmentalists are suing the federal government over what they say is a failure to protect the horseshoe crab, a prehistoric-looking species that is important to the survival of shore birds in South Carolina and other coastal states.
Researchers discovered that a poison frog species described decades ago was based on a mix-up involving the wrong museum specimen. The frog tied to the official species name turned out to be brown, not the colorful animal shown in the original photo. After tracing old records
Scientists are learning to engineer light in rich, multidimensional ways that dramatically increase how much information a single photon can carry. This leap could make quantum communication more secure, quantum computers more efficient, and sensors far more sensitive. Recent
When writer Cory Doctorow introduced the term "enshittification" in 2023, he captured a pattern many users had already noticed in their personal lives.
Their symptoms are rare and understudied The post These Women Giggle, Cry, and Sneeze When They Orgasm appeared first on Nautilus .
A distant pulsar’s radio signal flickers as it passes through space, much like stars twinkle in Earth’s atmosphere. By monitoring this effect for 10 months, researchers watched the pattern slowly evolve as gas, Earth, and the pulsar all moved. Those changes create minuscule
Living cells pay a hidden energy price not just to run chemical reactions, but to keep them on track and block all the alternatives. A new thermodynamic framework makes it possible to calculate these overlooked costs and compare different metabolic pathways. When tested on
It’s the most distant supernova recorded to date The post Astronomers Witness Star Exploding at the Edge of the Universe appeared first on Nautilus .
The circumglobal teleconnection pattern (CGT) is a key mode of atmospheric variability during boreal summer, identified by an upper-tropospheric wave train propagating along the subtropical jet. CGT is one of the critical drivers of Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude heat waves.
Generative AI is becoming ubiquitous in everyday life. Large language models like ChatGPT can help answer questions, write email, and solve problems at seemingly lightning speed, pulling from enormous datasets to engage in conversations with their users. Generative AI tools are
The future of urban green space might be written in code, according to research in the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems. The age-old image of the landscape architect, sketchbook in hand, guided by intuition and a feel for the land, is being dug over
Two things are clear from a University of Michigan analysis of nearly 200,000 Twitter posts between 2012 and 2022. One, people are really good at identifying peak pollen season: The largest volume of tweets about pollen often lined up with pollen counters hitting their biggest
Federally funded Indigenous-led conservation programs are delivering highly effective climate and biodiversity outcomes, aligning with national greenhouse gas mitigation and biodiversity goals, according to a new paper led by Concordia researchers.
A new study from Aarhus University shows that star ratings of books are not always accurate. Average ratings on Goodreads can hide both literary classics and highly divided reading experiences—and can therefore be a misleading measure of literary value.
Heinrich Schliemann was a thousand years off the mark—but he did still make meaningful discoveries The post The Amateur Archaeologist Who Found the Wrong Troy appeared first on Nautilus .
Many migratory species such as birds, bats, whales, and fish cross national borders to complete their lifecycle and need internationally coordinated action to protect them. The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) is an environmental treaty
A Rice University-led team has unveiled how tiny molecular structures on industrial catalysts behave during the manufacture of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM), a core ingredient in adhesives, paints, coatings, packaging, textiles and many other products people use every day.
Artificial intelligence is changing how we predict river flow—but a new study led by researchers at the University of British Columbia shows that these models often get the right answers for the wrong reasons.
A new study led by a Georgia State University astronomy graduate student is a major step forward in the search for stars that could host Earth-like planets that may prove to be good havens for life to develop. Sebastián Carrazco-Gaxiola shared the results at the January 2026
When it comes to understanding the universe, what we know is only a sliver of the whole picture.
A study published in Avian Research demonstrates that the Hide-in-Bird Pond (HIBP) model, a community-based, grassroots avitourism initiative in which local communities establish artificial ponds and feeding stations to attract avian species for non-invasive observation and
Weight says a lot. In the kitchen, it could mean cooking with too little or too much of an ingredient. For scientists, a molecule's weight can help determine its makeup. This, in turn, can shed light on whether a potential drug is acting on the body or not working at all.
PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are not called "forever chemicals" for nothing. These fluorine-containing organic molecules are difficult to break down and are likely to remain in the environment for decades or even centuries, where they can accumulate in
Management of gray wolves (Canis lupus) has a reputation for being one of the most contentious conservation issues in the United States. The topic often conjures stark images of supporters versus opponents: celebratory wolf reintroductions to Yellowstone National Park and
Earth system box models are essential tools for reconstructing long-term climatic and environmental evolution and uncovering Earth system mechanisms. To overcome the spatiotemporal resolution limitations of current deep-time models, a research team has developed CESM-SCION, a
An international team of researchers led by Hokkaido University has characterized the unique mechanics that enable Arcella, a shelled, single-celled amoeba, to move skillfully across different surfaces.
After combing through NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's archive of sweeping extragalactic cosmic fields, a small team of astronomers at the University of Missouri says they have identified a sample of galaxies that have a previously unseen combination of features.
Someone in the office makes a racially insensitive comment, and a white co-worker asks a Black colleague to help correct the offender.
Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted two rare kinds of dust in the dwarf galaxy Sextans A, one of the most chemically primitive galaxies near the Milky Way.
A new study from Bar-Ilan University shows that one of sleep's core functions originated hundreds of millions of years ago in jellyfish and sea anemones, among the earliest creatures with nervous systems. By tracing this mechanism back to these ancient animals, the research
Finding one tick on your body is scary enough—tick-borne diseases are serious—but what if you found more than 10 on yourself in just one month? That's the plight of some farmers as the threat of ticks and tick-borne diseases grows, according to new research featuring experts at
Researchers at CU Boulder have created tiny, microorganism-inspired particles that can change their shape and self-propel, much like living things, in response to electrical fields.
A 1.78-million-year-old partial elephant skeleton found in Tanzania associated with stone tools may represent the oldest known evidence of butchery of the giant herbivores
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is the system of currents responsible for shuttling warm water northward and colder, denser water to the south. This "conveyor belt" process helps redistribute heat, nutrients, and carbon around the planet.
When Roro (not her real name) lost her mother to cancer, the grief felt bottomless. In her mid-20s and working as a content creator in China, she was haunted by the unfinished nature of their relationship. Their bond had always been complicated—shaped by unspoken resentments
Astronomers have captured the most detailed look yet at faraway galaxies at the peak of their youth, an active time when the adolescent galaxies were fervently producing new stars.
NASA's SPHEREx Observatory has mapped the entire sky in 102 infrared colors, as seen here in this image released on Dec. 18, 2025. This image features a selection of colors emitted primarily by stars (blue, green, and white), hot hydrogen gas (blue), and cosmic dust (red).
Using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have revealed the universe's most mysterious distant objects, known as little red dots, may actually be gigantic, short-lived stars.
Scientists at the University of Missouri have identified a small group of unusual objects in the early universe. Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Haojing Yan and his team at Mizzou's College of Arts and Science spotted these strange objects, which seem like one
The oldest fossilized remains of complex animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and as if from nowhere, in rocks that are 538 million years old.
The discourse around climate change can lead to anxiety, detachment or resignation because it often stretches language in ways that make the world feel distant.
The earliest acoustic vibrations in the cosmos weren’t exactly sound – they travelled at half the speed of light and there was nobody around to hear them anyway. But Jim Baggott says from the first moments, the universe was singing
A collaborative team of researchers from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the University of Florida, Gainesville and University of Iowa have developed tools that allow grasses—including major grain crops like corn—to act as living biosensors capable of detecting minute
Researchers found evidence that a companion star may be influencing Betelgeuse, explaining why the latter star’s brightness changes over time