“Solar panels today will eventually reach the end of their life and need recycling or disposing of” Jacques Hugo/Getty Images By the mid 2020s, solar power had become the cheapest form of electricity generation in history and the fastest-growing type of energy supply. The lifespan of solar panels had increased significantly, to 30 or 40…
Prey animals can use their colors to hide from predators or dissuade them from attacking. But local conditions determine which option works best. A global study comparing defensive coloration in insects reveals that camouflage and warning colors each excel under certain environmental conditions. The findings, published September 25 in Science, identify fundamental factors that may…
September 25, 2025 3 min read Scientists Take on Taylor Swift’s Linguistic Eras An analysis of Taylor Swift’s interviews suggests her speech pattern has changed over her career By Mohana Basu & Nature magazine Taylor Swift delivered a commencement address to New York University graduates in May 2022. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images Researchers have…
The Yunxian 2 skull was squashed, but has now been reconstructed and appears to be an early Denisovan Gary Todd (CC0) The origins of our species may lie much further back in time than we thought, and the same may be true of our extinct Neanderthal and Denisovan cousins. According to a new analysis of…
A roughly 1-million-year-old Chinese hominid skull has long vexed efforts to nail down its evolutionary identity. Fossil comparisons using a new digital reconstruction of this specimen, dubbed the Yunxian 2 skull, indicate that it belonged to an early member of an Asian hominid line that culminated in a now-extinct species called Homo longi, researchers report…
September 25, 2025 3 min read Life Thrives on Maryland’s ‘Ghost Fleet’ of WWI-Era Shipwrecks Nearly 100 years ago dozens of ships were abandoned in a shallow bay in the Potomac River. Today plants and animals are thriving on the skeletons of these vessels By Andrea Tamayo edited by Andrea Thompson Wrecks near the coast…
Pipes made from PVC plastic could be improved by adding nanoparticles valentyn semenov/Alamy A sprinkling of nanoparticles could be the solution to a problem that has long plagued plastics manufacturers – namely, how do you make a material that is both strong, tough and easy to work with? Hu-Jun Qian at Jilin University in China…
Chenyang (Leo) Lin grew up in a coastal city in southern China, far from any woods. So, when he went on a hike in New Hampshire last year, he was awed by the large trees and darting squirrels. “That was very new to me,” says Lin, a brain and behavior expert at Boston University. …
September 23, 2025 2 min read This Blazing Exoplanet Breaks All the Rules about Alien Atmospheres, JWST Finds Hot, small and old—exoplanet TOI-561 b is just about the worst place to look for alien air. Scientists using JWST found it there anyway By Elise Cutts edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier New research suggests a rocky…
One of the cheetah mummies inside the cave it was found in Ahmed Boug et al. 2025/National Centre for Wildlife, Saudi Arabia The mummified remains of seven cheetahs, some dating back thousands of years, have been reported in caves in Saudi Arabia – the first naturally mummified big cats ever found by scientists. Cheetahs (Acinonyx…
