Scientists aren’t usually able to measure the size of gigantic planets, like Jupiter or Saturn, which are far from the stars they orbit. But a UC Riverside-led team has done it.

A planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: A hypothesized, distant body in our solar system dubbed "Planet Nine." This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disk. This disk is similar to our Kuiper Belt of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune. In our own solar system, the suspected Planet Nine would also...

University of Copenhagen researchers have advanced their quantum technology to such a degree that classical computing technology can no longer keep up. They have developed a chip that, with financial backing, could be scaled up and used to build the quantum simulator of the future. Their results are now published in Science Advances.

Scientists say they may have discovered why stress makes hair turn white, and a potential way of stopping it happening without reaching for the dye (Readers may find some of the details distressing). In experiments on mice, stem cells that control skin and hair colour became damaged after intense stress. In a chance finding, dark-furred mice turned completely white within weeks. The US and Brazilian researchers said this avenue was worth exploring further to develop a drug that prevents hair colour loss from ageing.

Two main types of cells compose the central nervous system—neurons and glia. Neurons form the primary actors in the brain. They use electrical signals and the chemical signalling to relay information about the various regions. Without the function of neurons and supporting cells, anything that we think and experience and do would be impossible.

Archaeologists in Pompeii, the city buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD, have made the extraordinary find of a frescoed hot food and drinks shop that served up the ancient equivalent of street food to Roman passersby.

For many reasons, 2020 may be a watershed year for society and science. Astronomers and space agencies spent the year managing the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic. They also made breakthroughs in new technologies and bid farewell to several important projects.

A living member of species of tortoise not seen in more than 110 years and feared to be extinct has been found in a remote part of the Galápagos island of Fernandina. An adult female Chelonoidis phantasticus, also known as the Fernandina giant tortoise, was spotted on Sunday by a joint expedition of the Galápagos National Park and the US-based Galapagos Conservancy, Ecuador’s environment ministry said.

A couple’s romantic stroll along a beach in Thailand has become life-changing after they stumbled upon a precious substance that could be worth around $792,345. Veera Juengboon, 31 and his wife Monruedee, 26, travelled to Phuket, to see a friend when they noticed a yellowish lump on the beach.

Using years of data collected from ice-covered habitats all over the world, a Montana State University team has discovered new insights into the processes that support microbial life underneath ice sheets and glaciers, and the role those organisms play in perpetuating life through ice ages and, perhaps, in seemingly inhospitable environments on other planets.

In 2008, miners off the coast of Namibia stumbled upon buried treasure: a sunken Portuguese ship known as the Bom Jesus, which went missing on its way to India in 1533. The trading ship bore a trove of gold and silver coins and other valuable materials. But to a team of archaeologists and biologists, the Bom Jesus’ most precious cargo was a haul of more than 100 elephant tusks — the largest archaeological cargo of African ivory ever discovered.

Another new variant of the novel coronavirus seems to have emerged in Nigeria, the head of Africa’s disease control body said on Thursday, cautioning more investigation was needed.

An international team of scientists has collected the first possible radio signal from a planet beyond our solar system, emanating from an exoplanet system about 51 light-years away. Using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope in the Netherlands, the researchers uncovered emission bursts from the Tau Bootes star-system hosting a so-called hot Jupiter, a gaseous giant planet that is very close to its own sun.

Microplastic particles have been revealed in the placentas of unborn babies for the first time, which the researchers said was “a matter of great concern”. The health impact of microplastics in the body is as yet unknown. But the scientists said they could carry chemicals that could cause long-term damage or upset the foetus’s developing immune system. The particles are likely to have been consumed or breathed in by the mothers.

Using a bacterial strain found in mangroves, researchers at Texas A&M University have uncovered a low-cost, sustainable method for producing bioplastics from sewage sludge and wastewater.

A diver in the US state of Florida has found a giant prehistoric shark tooth during a weekend trip out to sea. Mike Nastasio runs Black Gold Fossil Charters out of Venice and regularly takes groups out on the water to go searching for megalodon shark teeth.

A mysterious, previously undiscovered supervolcano may be lurking beneath Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. A new study suggests a wide crater, created when the supervolcano exploded, connects at least four existing volcanoes. It’s so big that if the supervolcano erupted during the last few thousand years, it could have disrupted civilizations around the world, says John Power, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Volcano Observatory. Power presents the findings at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on December 7.

A spectacular Anglo-Saxon silver cross has emerged from beneath 1,000 years of encrusted dirt following painstaking conservation. Such is its quality that whoever commissioned this treasure may have been a high-standing cleric or even a king. It was a sorry-looking object when first unearthed in 2014 from a ploughed field in western Scotland as part of the Galloway Hoard, the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, acquired by the National Museums Scotland (NMS) in 2017.

A team of archaeologists is working to uncover whether ancient objects in South Africa were once used as sound tools to make noise or music.

Archaeologists discovered a collection of 12,000-year-old rock paintings in the Amazon that depict people living amongst mastodons and other giant animals.