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Planetary Science

NASA’s DART spacecraft just smashed into an asteroid — on purpose

If the first-ever attempt to knock a space rock off course works, it could provide a blueprint to protect Earth from a killer asteroid.

Anthropology

In Maya society, cacao use was for everyone, not just royals

Previously considered a preserve of Maya elites, cacao was consumed across all social strata, a new study finds.

Environment

Mangrove forests expand and contract with a lunar cycle

The carbon-sequestering trees grow in a roughly 18-year cycle according to tides influenced by the moon’s orbit, a study in Australia finds.

Earth

Here’s how olivine may trigger deep earthquakes

Olivine’s transformation into another mineral can destabilize rocks and set off quakes more than 300 kilometers down, experiments suggest.

Planetary Science

Here is the first direct look at Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years

In 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft took the first pics of Neptune’s rings. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is providing a more detailed look.

Life

Has AlphaFold actually solved biology’s protein-folding problem?

An AI called AlphaFold predicted structures for nearly every protein known to science. Those predictions aren’t without limits, some researchers say.

Particle Physics

How ghostly neutrinos could explain the universe’s matter mystery

If neutrinos behave differently from their antimatter counterparts, it could help explain why our cosmos is full of stuff.

Health & Medicine

This face mask can sense the presence of an airborne virus

Within minutes of exposure, a sensor in a mask prototype can detect proteins from viruses that cause COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.

Animals

After eons of isolation, these desert fish flub social cues

Pahrump poolfish flunked a fear test, but maybe they’re scared of other things.

Astronomy

A protogalaxy in the Milky Way may be our galaxy’s original nucleus

Millions of ancient stars spanning about 18,000 light-years at the Milky Way’s heart are the kernel around which the galaxy grew, researchers say.

Animals

Drumming woodpeckers use similar brain regions as songbirds

Woodpeckers drum on trees and other objects using brain regions similar to those that songbirds use to sing, suggesting a common evolutionary origin for the complex behaviors.

Anthropology

Fossil finds put gibbons in Asia as early as 8 million years ago

Specimens from China raise questions about the evolutionary ID of an even older ape tooth from India.