Magnetars are a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field that can be 1000 times more powerful than that of the Earth.

Dexamethasone, a cheap and widely used steroid, has become the first drug shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients in what scientists hailed as a "major breakthrough".

Researchers from the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) have developed a new molecule called LIH383. In a press release, they claim that this new novel molecule binds to and blocks specific opioid peptides in the brain, thus regulating the levels of opioid peptides in the entire central nervous system.

A black hole about 390 million light-years away has caused the biggest eruption ever seen in the universe. The supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy located in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Its eruption was about five times greater than the last record-holder.

The formation of our solar system was a messy affair. Most of the material that existed before its formation—material formed around other, long-dead stars—was vaporized, then recondensed into new materials. But some grains of that material, formed before the sun's birth, still persist.

Astronomers think they’ve spotted the first example of a superbright blast of radio waves, called a fast radio burst, originating within the Milky Way. Dozens of these bursts have been sighted in other galaxies — all too far away to see the celestial engines that power them (SN: 2/7/20). But the outburst in our own galaxy, detected simultaneously by two radio arrays on April 28, was close enough to see that it was generated by a highly magnetic neutron star called a magnetar.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is moving away from its planet a hundred times faster than previously established, according to a new study. This could change the way scientists understand the evolution of Saturn's planetary system.

Planets form from a disk of gas and dust that encircle a young star — the dusk particles only 1/50th the diameter of a single human hair. Gravitational forces pull the gas and dust together and, sometime between 1 to 10 million years later, all of that collision results in a planetary body.

The oldest disk-shaped galaxy ever spotted formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, a new study finds. That’s much earlier than astronomers thought that this type of galaxy could form. Previous observations show that disk-shaped galaxies — including sprawling, spiral systems like the Milky Way — didn’t show up in large numbers until between 3 billion and 4 billion years after the Big Bang, which occurred about 13.8 billion years ago.

The oldest known nearly complete gene sequence from the HIV strain that spread across the world has been found in a tissue sample from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a new study finds. The tissue sample was taken and preserved in 1966, making this HIV sequence 10 years older than the previous oldest genome, which came from a blood sample taken in 1976 in the DRC. Gene sequences like these – which come from before the virus that causes AIDS was discovered in 1983 – help pinpoint the timing of genetic mutations in the virus.

A mysterious 68-million-year-old fossil found on Seymour Island off Antarctica’s coast that looked like a deflated football has turned out to be a unique find - the second-largest egg on record and one that may have belonged to a huge marine reptile that lived alongside the dinosaurs.

Skywatchers had high hopes that a comet called ATLAS would light up the night sky this spring, with forecasts suggesting it could become bright enough to see with the unaided eye. Instead, the icy object crumbled to pieces — but it's still putting on a spectacular show for scientists. Ye Quanzhi, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, snagged some time with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to take a look at Comet ATLAS on Monday (April 20) and caught a stunning image of its fragments that he shared on Twitter as a preview of his research.

Celebrate the new year with some of our most popular scientific discoveries from 2019.

A newly discovered black hole is closer than any other to Earth, scientists say. It is so nearby that the stars that swirl around it can be see with the naked eye, they write in a new study.And the object could be just the "tip of the iceberg" with many other similar black holes being hidden and waiting to be found, the astronomers say.

According to the latest material published by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, it was finally possible to take genetic information from a human grave that has an age of about 800,000 years. This important step towards the future of past genetic discoveries was made in collaboration with the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) from Burgos and many other institutions.

A radar survey around the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings has revealed possible evidence of further hidden chambers behind its walls. The findings — in an unpublished report, details of which have been seen by Nature — resurrect a controversial theory that the young king’s burial place hides the existence of a larger tomb, which could contain the mysterious Egyptian queen Nefertiti.

An international team of astrophysicists have discovered the key to unlocking the secret song inside a mysterious group of pulsating stars. Most stars pulsate because waves such as sound waves are trapped within them, unable to escape into the vacuum of space and making the cosmic objects resonate like musical instruments.

On Jan. 18, 2000, a fireball lit up the morning sky over Yukon and northern British Columbia. Loud bangs shook the area, and dust clouds wafted in the upper atmosphere. The culprit: a five-metre rock that entered Earth's atmosphere. While most of the roughly 105-tonne meteor broke up on entry, some fragments showered down to the frozen landscape, much of it on Tagish Lake, B.C.

A hardback first edition Harry Potter book which was found in a skip has sold for £33,000 at auction. The rare copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was discovered by a teacher 12 years ago along with two paperback first editions. The anonymous seller found the books outside a school while tidying its library before an Ofsted inspection. After the paperbacks went for £3,400 and £3,000, the seller said: "To say I'm pleased is an understatement."

Astronomers have discovered an activity cycle in another fast radio burst, potentially unearthing a significant clue about these mysterious deep-space phenomena. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are extragalactic flashes of light that pack a serious wallop, unleashing in a few milliseconds as much energy as Earth's sun does in a century. Scientists first spotted an FRB in 2007, and the cause of these eruptions remains elusive nearly a decade and a half later; potential explanations range from merging superdense neutron stars to advanced alien civilizations.