Live Science

Scientists say they have built a "synthetic cell" that can eat, grow and divide in a way that's remarkably similar to living cells. The research, released to the preprint database bioRxiv July 2, has not been peer-reviewed yet. It introduces SpudCell, a new type of artificial cell, and marks a striking step toward creating living cells from scratch. But for study co-author Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota, that's far from the most interesting part of the work. "

Deep in a limestone cave on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that Neanderthals and the modern humans who moved in later left behind surprisingly similar traces of their daily lives — evidence that they hunted the same animals, crafted the same stone tools and collected the same type of seashells. The findings, published Monday (July 6) in the journal PNAS, feed into some of the biggest questions in human evolution: How similar were the cultures of Neanderthals

Scientists uncovered a link between mild heart trouble and microscopic signs of brain damage that may raise the risk of memory problems down the line.The new study, published Monday (July 6) in The Journal of Neuroscience, did not prove that the heart issues directly caused memory problems. But it "adds to the overall picture that preserving healthy brain-heart communication is key for healthy aging," said Dr. Jan Scheitz, a consultant stroke neurologist and head of the Brain-Heart Lab at the Ch

Scientists have found evidence that gravitational waves from a spectacular black hole collision carry signals from the very edge of the newly formed black hole. If confirmed by future observations, the discovery could provide an entirely new way to investigate what happens in the immediate vicinity of a black hole without ever observing it directly. In a new study, the researchers analyzed an exceptionally strong gravitational wave event known as GW250114. They identified a "direct wave," a sub

The patient: A 63-year-old woman in Massachusetts The symptoms: The patient went to the emergency department after experiencing nausea and vomiting for about a month, along with decreased appetite. She told doctors that she'd also experienced a burning pain in her upper abdomen and right side of her torso, which wrapped around to her back. She'd tried treating these symptoms with two common over-the-counter medications for acid reflux, but the treatments didn't help.In the year prior, the patien

Astronomers have reconstructed the "skeleton" of the cosmos in unprecedented detail, thanks to the largest-ever survey conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The resulting map reveals how galaxies have evolved since the universe's infancy around 13 billion years ago and how they fall together in a vast structure called the cosmic web. The cosmic web is the largest known structure in existence, home to countless galaxy clusters and clusters of clusters. It is the framework of the uni

The Stargazer figurine was carved from marble around 5,000 years ago. (Image credit: Cleveland Museum of Art / Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; John L. Severance Fund 1993.165 (Public Domain))QUICK FACTSName: The StargazerWhat it is: A marble figurineWhere it is from: Kırşehir, TurkeyWhen it was made: Circa 3000 B.C.This small, abstract sculpture of a woman, carved from milky-white marble, is known as The Stargazer because her head is tilted back and her eyes appear to stare skyward. Only about 30 fig

A simple method to thicken Arctic sea ice has shown promising results in its very first field experiment, performed in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.Researchers are considering several controversial geoengineering techniques to slow the catastrophic melt of Arctic sea ice, including stratospheric aerosol injection, which involves shooting tiny sulfur particles into the sky to blot out the sun. But in a new study, scientists evaluated the merits of a much safer and more straightforward approach:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is continuing to have a disruptive impact on ever more parts of humanity. But what does it mean in the long run? A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from Austrian researcher Sergey Ivliev, extrapolates what the wide scale adoption of AI means for the future of humanity in space — and in particular what it means for the ultimate question of whether we're truly alone in the galaxy or not.A framework for much of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence came

quick factsWhat it is: A collection of "red, white and blue" images to celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States.Where it is: Between 11,000 light-years and 19 million light-years from EarthWhen it was shared: June 30, 2026.NASA has marked the 250th birthday of the U.S. with a striking new collection of cosmic images from its Chandra X-ray Observatory, presenting four deep-space objects in red, white and blue.The image set combines X-ray data from Chandra — which has been orbiting Earth

With violent conflicts happening across the world right now, war feels like a permanent condition. But have humans ever lived without war?The answer depends on how you define "war." If war means a fight between two governments, then yes, there have been peaceful periods "because for nearly 99% of human history, there were no governments," said Ian Morris, a historian at Stanford University and author of "War! What Is It Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots"

Want to speed up your recovery after an injury or a workout? Some influencers are fans of shots of BPC-157 and TB-500 for that. Want scar-free, youthful skin and thick hair? Reddit posts rave about GHK-Cu and KPV. Want to build beautiful, bulky biceps? Some fitness influencers swear shots of ipamorelin will do wonders. This is the world of peptides — an assortment of chemicals that promise to boost your body and health — and people are self-injecting them in a growing wellness trend.Promoted by

This week's science news was all about goings on in space, with reports that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) picked up a signal from a mysterious, never-before-seen substance on Pluto and Titan.The space telescope detected a specific absorption line in the spectra of these worlds' atmospheres, revealing the characteristic trace of a unique and unknown molecule. It's unclear exactly what the molecule could be, and the mystery is made even more compelling by the fact that the environments of

A hefty "super Earth" lurking in one of the closest star systems to our planet may be much better suited to supporting extraterrestrial life than scientists initially thought, a new study suggests. The alien world's relative proximity to Earth, and the nature of its home star, make it a prime candidate for follow-up observations, researchers say. The exoplanet, dubbed GJ 3378b, was discovered in 2024 and orbits a red dwarf star around 25 light-years from our planet. The alien world circles its s

When you click to enter a website or try to log in or fill out a form, you may be asked to identify motorcycles from a grid of grainy images, decipher a string of convoluted characters, or click a box that states "I am not a robot."These tests are called CAPTCHAs, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." As their name suggests, they are meant to help a website distinguish if an action is coming from a human or a bot, since the aforementioned

The diminutive, now-extinct humans known as the "hobbits" were scavengers who dined on dwarf elephants after Komodo dragons took the best cuts, archaeologists have discovered. The finding upends the assumption that Homo floresiensis, a human species that arrived on the Indonesian island of Flores at least 700,000 years ago, hunted big game.First discovered in 2003, H. floresiensis has been nicknamed the hobbit because of its small size, averaging around 3 feet, 6 inches (106 centimeters) tall, a

The enigmatic Scythians, a diverse group of nomadic tribes known for their ferocity in battle, were organized around elite dynasties of powerful men and women over 2,500 years ago, a new DNA study finds. The results reveal that social inequality arose in these nomadic groups around 900 B.C., during the Iron Age.Most of what archaeologists know about the Scythians comes from ancient Greek and Roman accounts of the accomplished equestrians and from their large, mound-shaped tombs, called kurgans,

Fourth of July celebrations across the United States this weekend could be accompanied by light shows in the night skies, as a string of powerful solar eruptions appear set to strike Earth.The sun has been especially hyperactive over the past few days — firing off 10 M-class solar flares over 24 hours that have been accompanied by multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are set to slam into Earth on July 3 and July 5. CMEs are large, fast-moving clouds of magnetized plasma and solar radiat

On a dark mountaintop in Chile, the world's largest digital camera has begun filming its masterpiece. This Tuesday (June 30), scientists with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory announced that the facility's ambitious Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) officially began. Every night for the next 10 years, the observatory's car-size LSST Camera will capture a 3,200-megapixel image of the southern sky — then another, then another, slowly filling in a mosaic of the universe 30 seconds at a time. "In a

Astronomers have spotted an ancient galaxy shining through the cosmic fog of the early universe, revealing a detailed view that was thought to be impossible.Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, along with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), researchers detected "ionizing" ultraviolet photons — energetic light capable of stripping electrons from hydrogen atoms — coming from the galaxy, called MXDFz4.4. It's the earlie