Some of the mysterious pinpricks of light at the dawn of the Universe could be a type of object we've never seen before.

According to a new analysis of a "little red dot" (LRD) nicknamed The Cliff, these unexplained objects could be supermassive black holes wrapped in huge, dense clouds of gas, like an atmosphere surrounding a stellar core.

It's a very tidy explanation that solves a problem astronomers are struggling to reconcile: a 'break' in the LRDs' light that makes galaxies in the early Universe seem older than possible.

"We … conclude that the rest-optical and near-infrared continuum of The Cliff cannot originate from a massive, evolved stellar population with an extremely high stellar density," writes a team led by astrophysicist Anna de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

"Instead, we argue that the most plausible model is that of a luminous ionising source reddened by dense, absorbing gas in its close vicinity. Currently, the only model capable of producing both the strength and shape of the observed Balmer break is that of a black hole star."

A Balmer break is a sharp change in the spectrum of an object in space occurring in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, where shorter-wavelength light on one side of the line is much lower in intensity than the higher-wavelength light on the other side of the line. This feature is created by the absorption of shorter-wavelength light by hydrogen atoms.

A strong Balmer break is associated with galaxies that have a dominant population of A-type stars, which are just the right temperature to absorb light at the requisite wavelength.

Here's the kicker: to display that strong Balmer break, those galaxies have to be old enough for the earliest dominant population of O and B stars to have largely died off, leaving the A-type stars responsible for most of the galaxy's light, with little to no new star formation.

Many LRDs exhibit a strong Balmer break, at an epoch starting just 600 million years after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists believe this is too early in the lifespan of the Universe for a galaxy to have reached the stage of a dominant type-A population.

In turn, this has led to some investigation into what these small red lights at the dawn of spacetime might be – from primordial black holes to the seeds of supermassive stars.

For the first time, scientists in the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have directly tracked how dark excitons evolve in atomically thin materials. This achievement paves the way for advances in both classical and quantum information technologies. The study was published in Nature Communications.

Professor Keshav Dani, who leads the unit, emphasized the importance of the work: “Dark excitons have great potential as information carriers, because they are inherently less likely to interact with light, and hence less prone to degradation of their quantum properties. However, this invisibility also makes them very challenging to study and manipulate. Building on a previous breakthrough at OIST in 2020, we have opened a route to the creation, observation, and manipulation of dark excitons.”

“In the general field of electronics, one manipulates electron charge to process information,” explains Xing Zhu, co-first author and PhD student in the unit. “In the field of spintronics, we exploit the spin of electrons to carry information. Going further, in valleytronics, the crystal structure of unique materials enables us to encode information into distinct momentum states of the electrons, known as valleys.”

The ability to use the valley dimension of dark excitons to carry information positions them as promising candidates for quantum technologies. Dark excitons are by nature more resistant to environmental factors like thermal background than the current generation of qubits, potentially requiring less extreme cooling and making them less prone to decoherence, where the unique quantum state breaks down.

A new study has attempted to pin down the properties of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas, finding it is "anomalously massive" at around 33 billion tons. 

On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object, which was confirmed to be an interstellar comet with its own dusty coma, and suspected to be far larger than the previous two, with a then-estimated nucleus (the rocky part of the comet, excluding its coma) of around 5.6 kilometers (3.5 miles).

Sizing comets is a tricky business, primarily because to do so, you need to distinguish the comet from its coma. As comets approach the Sun in their orbit and heat up, they outgas, losing gas and later (when they are even closer to the Sun) dust, which forms their distinctive trail or coma. This outgassing acts like a thruster, slightly altering the trajectory, rotation, and speed of the comet.

That can complicate measurements, but it can also provide key clues. In a new paper, which has not yet been peer reviewed, from Harvard's Richard Cloete, Avi Loeb, and Peter Vereš, the team looked at data compiled by the Minor Planet Center between May 15 and September 23, 2025, from 227 observatories around the world, and compared the object's trajectory to what we would expect from gravitational acceleration alone (i.e. acceleration caused by the Sun's mass as it approaches closer).

The team's paper found that the non-gravitational acceleration was pretty small, at below 15 meters per day squared. That's pretty tiny, considering that we have already seen significant outgassing by the comet, including using the JWST, with a mass loss rate of around 150 kilograms (330 pounds) per second. To this team crunching the numbers, that suggests that the object's nucleus is massive, resisting change to acceleration as the Sun-facing side outgasses. 

The team estimates that the object weighs over 33 billion tons – or 33 trillion kilograms – with a nucleus diameter of 5 kilometers (3.1 miles). This is large for a comet, yes, but at 500 trillion tons, or 5×1017 kilograms (500 quadrillion kilograms), C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) still has it beat. But then again, it has the largest comet nucleus ever seen at 128 kilometers (80 miles) across.

So, where is the anomaly? According to Loeb, the mystery is why we haven't spotted many more interstellar objects before we spotted one of this size.

"3I/ATLAS is more massive than the other two interstellar objects, 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov by 3–5 orders of magnitude, constituting a major anomaly," Loeb said in a blog post. "Given the limited reservoir of heavy elements, we should have discovered on the order of a hundred thousand interstellar objects on the 0.1-kilometer scale of 1I/Oumuamua before finding 3I/ATLAS, yet we only detected two interstellar objects previously."

DMT, short for dimethyltryptamine, is a naturally occurring psychoactive compound that exists in a variety of plants and animals.

A recent study published in Science Advances by researchers at the HUN-REN BRC Institute of Biophysics and the Semmelweis University Heart and Vascular Centre reports that DMT can lessen the damaging impact of stroke in both laboratory cell cultures and animal models.

A solution from nature in the spotlight
This compound is also produced in the human brain, where it is now being investigated in clinical trials as a potential aid for restoring brain function following stroke. Until recently, the way DMT worked in this context remained unclear. “It is amazing how we can always turn to nature to find ingenious solutions for health problems,” says co-lead author Mária Deli from the HUN-REN BRC.

The blood-brain barrier as a therapeutic target
“We found that DMT significantly reduced infarct volume and edema formation in a rat stroke model,” explains co-first author Marcell László. In both animal experiments and cell culture models, the authors showed that DMT treatment restored the structure and function of the damaged blood-brain barrier and improved the function of astroglial cells.

This psychoactive compound also inhibited the production of inflammatory cytokines in brain endothelial cells and peripheral immune cells, while reducing the activation of brain microglia cells through Sigma-1 receptors.

DMT could serve as therapeutic adjuvant to existing stroke treatments
“The therapeutic options currently available for stroke are very limited. The dual action of DMT, protecting the blood-brain barrier while reducing brain inflammation, offers a novel, complex approach that could complement existing treatments,” says Judit Vigh, co-first author of the work.

Since current stroke therapies do not always result in full recovery, a DMT-based treatment may represent a promising new alternative, mainly in combination with existing methods. The recent findings from researchers in Szeged and Budapest, Hungary, support the development of a therapy that goes beyond the limitations of conventional stroke treatment. Clinical trials on the use of DMT and investigations on its long-term effects are currently ongoing.

Around 30,000 years ago, a hunter-gatherer left behind what may be a "personal toolkit" in what is now the Czech Republic, a new study finds.

Researchers uncovered the extraordinary cluster of artifacts in 2021 during an excavation at the Paleolithic site of Milovice IV. The "kit" contains 29 stone blades and bladelets that were found clumped together. The nature of the find indicates that the tools were bundled when deposited, likely in a container or case made from a perishable material, according to the study, which was published Aug. 13 in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology.

The find provides a remarkable glimpse into the life of a hunter-gatherer from the Paleolithic, which spans roughly 3.3 million years ago to just over 10,000 years ago.

The artifacts likely highlight an episode in the life of one person — which is "very rare" for the Paleolithic, study first author Dominik Chlachula, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email.

Moreover, the discovery may shed light on the behavior of prehistoric people during migrations or hunting trips, which did not tend to leave behind many traces in the landscape and are therefore practically invisible to archaeologists, he said.

In a groundbreaking first, a gene therapy in clinical trials has slowed the progression of Huntington's disease, a rare genetic disorder in which toxic bits of protein cause brain cells to malfunction and die.

To date, approved treatments for Huntington's disease aim to manage its symptoms, which most often emerge in a person's 30s or 40s. The progressive condition injures and kills key neurons involved in controlling mood, cognition and motor control. Various drugs can help to offset the depression, hallucinations and poorly coordinated movements that arise from that destruction.

Now, in trial results shared Wednesday (Sept. 24), scientists announced that a new gene therapy called AMT-130 appears to slow the disease's progression — marking a first for the field.

"These groundbreaking data are the most convincing evidence in the field to date and underscore the disease-modifying effect in Huntington's disease, where an urgent need persists," Dr. Sarah Tabrizi, the lead scientific advisor on the trial and the director of the University College London (UCL) Huntington's Disease Centre, said in a statement. "For patients, AMT-130 has the potential to preserve daily function, keep them in work longer, and meaningfully slow disease progression."

Don't rule out the grasshopper mouse. These rodents are equipped with special venom-blocking proteins that are especially useful when battling a potentially paralyzing foe—like the giant hairy scorpion.

A team of MIT geochemists has unearthed new evidence in very old rocks suggesting that some of the first animals on Earth were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge.

In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that they have identified "chemical fossils" that may have been left by ancient sponges in rocks that are more than 541 million years old. A chemical fossil is a remnant of a biomolecule that originated from a living organism that has since been buried, transformed, and preserved in sediment, sometimes for hundreds of millions of years.

The newly identified chemical fossils are special types of steranes, which are the geologically stable form of sterols, such as cholesterol, that are found in the cell membranes of complex organisms. The researchers traced these special steranes to a class of sea sponges known as demosponges. Today, demosponges come in a huge variety of sizes and colors, and live throughout the oceans as soft and squishy filter feeders. Their ancient counterparts may have shared similar characteristics.

"We don't know exactly what these organisms would have looked like back then, but they absolutely would have lived in the ocean, they would have been soft-bodied, and we presume they didn't have a silica skeleton," says Roger Summons, the Schlumberger Professor of Geobiology Emeritus in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).

The group's discovery of sponge-specific chemical fossils offers strong evidence that the ancestors of demosponges were among the first animals to evolve, and that they likely did so much earlier than the rest of Earth's major animal groups.

It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not. Comets C/2025 K1 ATLAS (left) and C/2025 R2 SWAN (right) appeared near each other by chance last week in the featured image taken from France's Reunion Island in the southern Indian Ocean.

Fainter Comet ATLAS is approaching our Sun and will reach its closest approach in early October when it is also expected to be its brightest -- although still only likely visible with long exposures on a camera. The brighter comet, nicknamed SWAN25B, is now headed away from our Sun, although its closest approach to Earth is expected in mid-October, when optimistic estimates have it becoming bright enough to see with the unaided eye. Each comet has a greenish coma of expelled gas and an ion tail pointing away from the Sun.

Image Credit & Copyright: Luc Perrot (TWAN)

Whenever you see the ISS from Earth, WE aboard the ISS cannot see you!

When ISS is exposed in sunlight, our window reflectivity blinds us! We can only see you when you cannot see us!

Same effect as how you cannot see through your kitchen window at night when the lights are on!

Meeting the standard daily requirement for vitamin B12, which is essential for making DNA, red blood cells, and nerve tissue, may not provide enough protection for the brain, particularly in older adults. In fact, falling within the “normal” range could still increase the risk of cognitive problems.

Researchers at UC San Francisco studied healthy older adults and discovered that participants with lower B12 levels, even though still considered normal, showed neurological and cognitive weaknesses. These individuals had more damage in the brain’s white matter (the network of nerve fibers that allows different regions of the brain to communicate) and scored lower on tests measuring cognitive speed and visual processing compared with those who had higher B12 levels. The study was published in Annals of Neurology.

Rethinking Vitamin B12 Guidelines
According to senior author Ari J. Green, MD, of UCSF’s Departments of Neurology and Ophthalmology and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, the results raise concerns about whether current B12 recommendations are sufficient and suggest that guidelines may need to be revised.

“Previous studies that defined healthy amounts of B12 may have missed subtle functional manifestations of high or low levels that can affect people without causing overt symptoms,” said Green, noting that clear deficiencies of the vitamin are commonly associated with a type of anemia. “Revisiting the definition of B12 deficiency to incorporate functional biomarkers could lead to earlier intervention and prevention of cognitive decline.”

Researchers at the University of Bristol have uncovered unusual behavior in Titan’s atmosphere for the first time.

Using data from the Cassini-Huygens mission, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency, the team found that Saturn’s largest moon has a dense, hazy atmosphere that does not rotate in step with the surface. Instead, it oscillates like a gyroscope, shifting position with the change of seasons.

Titan stands out as the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere, a feature that has fascinated planetary scientists for decades. After analyzing 13 years of thermal infrared measurements collected by Cassini, the researchers were able to chart how Titan’s atmosphere leans and drifts over time.

A gyroscopic wobble
“The behavior of Titan’s atmospheric tilt is very strange!” said Lucy Wright, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences. “Titan’s atmosphere appears to be acting like a gyroscope, stabilizing itself in space.

“We think some event in the past may have knocked the atmosphere off its spin axis, causing it to wobble.

“Even more intriguingly, we’ve found that the size of this tilt changes with Titan’s seasons.”

A recent study found that ground shaking caused by moonquakes, not meteorite impacts, was responsible for altering the terrain in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the site of the Apollo 17 landing in 1972. The research also identified a likely source of these surface changes and evaluated the potential hazards by applying new seismic models, with results that carry important implications for both future lunar exploration and the development of permanent bases on the Moon.

Geological evidence from Apollo 17 site
The research team examined data from the Apollo 17 site, where astronauts had gathered rock samples from boulder falls and landslides believed to have been triggered by moonquakes. By analyzing these geological traces, they were able to estimate the intensity of past moonquakes and determine their most likely origin.

“We don’t have the sort of strong motion instruments that can measure seismic activity on the moon like we do on Earth, so we had to look for other ways to evaluate how much ground motion there may have been, like boulder falls and landslides that get mobilized by these seismic events,” Schmerr said.

Our Milky Way galaxy never sits still: it rotates and wobbles. And now, data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope reveal that our galaxy also has a giant wave rippling outwards from its center.

We've known for about a hundred years that the galaxy's stars rotate around its center, and Gaia has measured their speeds and motions. Since the 1950s, we've known that the Milky Way's disk is warped. Then, in 2020, Gaia discovered that this disk wobbles over time, similarly to the motion of a spinning top.

And now it has become clear that a great wave stirs the motion of stars in our galaxy over distances of tens of thousands of light-years from the sun. Like a rock thrown into a pond, making waves ripple outwards, this galactic wave of stars spans a large portion of the Milky Way's outer disk.

Human skin cells have been used to produce fertilizable eggs in a proof-of-concept study that heralds a potential new approach to infertility treatment. While much more research is needed to know how truly safe and effective this could be, it opens up the possibility that we could one day create new egg cells for women containing their own DNA.  

Infertility impacts an estimated one in six adults globally, and lots of scientists are working to unpack the multitude of causes and develop new approaches to treatment. A recent world-first estimate found that over 13 million babies have been born through assisted reproduction. 

As well as improvements to existing technologies like in-vitro fertilization (IVF), recent years have seen advances like mitochondrial transfer. This allows parents to avoid passing on inherited mitochondrial diseases to their children by taking mitochondrial DNA from a third person. 

A common cause of infertility is insufficient or degraded egg cells. In such cases, conventional IVF may not be an option, but one exciting alternative that’s recently been explored is somatic cell nuclear transfer. This involves swapping the nucleus of a donor egg cell with the nucleus from another cell – such as a skin cell – producing a functional egg with genetic material from the parent-to-be. 

Manufacturers of infrared cameras are facing a growing challenge. Many of the materials used in today’s detectors, including toxic heavy metals, are now restricted under environmental regulations. As a result, companies often find themselves forced to choose between maintaining performance or meeting compliance standards.

These tightening rules have slowed the spread of infrared technology in civilian markets, even as interest rises in areas such as self-driving vehicles, medical imaging, and national security.

A team from NYU Tandon School of Engineering has introduced a promising alternative in a study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Their approach replaces mercury, lead, and other restricted substances with environmentally friendly quantum dots that can detect infrared light without relying on hazardous materials.

A Quantum Dot Alternative
Instead of the traditional, slow, and costly fabrication methods that require atoms to be placed with extreme precision across detector pixels (similar to carefully assembling a puzzle under a microscope), the researchers turned to colloidal quantum dots.

These quantum dots are created entirely in liquid form, like mixing an ink, and then applied using scalable coating techniques already common in industries such as packaging and newspaper printing. Moving from atom-by-atom construction to this solution-based process could slash production costs and make large-scale commercial use of infrared detectors far more feasible.

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn's moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

In 2005, Cassini found the first evidence that Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Jets of water burst from cracks close to the moon's south pole, shooting ice grains into space. Smaller than grains of sand, some of the tiny pieces of ice fall back onto the moon's surface, while others escape and form a ring around Saturn that traces Enceladus's orbit.

More than four years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are still working to fully understand the lingering effects of infection with SARS-CoV-2. One of the most concerning outcomes is Long COVID, a chronic condition that can emerge after the initial illness and bring a wide range of lasting health problems.

Among its most common and disruptive symptoms is cognitive impairment, often described as “brain fog.” Studies suggest that over 80% of people living with Long COVID experience this issue, which can make it difficult to work or handle daily responsibilities. With hundreds of millions of cases worldwide, the condition has become both a major public health concern and a growing socioeconomic burden.

Despite how widespread Long COVID is, its root causes remain unclear. Some imaging studies have revealed changes in brain structure, but these findings have not explained the molecular processes that lead to cognitive symptoms. Because the molecules that regulate communication between neurons are extremely difficult to study directly, researchers currently lack objective biomarkers that could confirm a Long COVID diagnosis or guide the development of effective treatments.

A Breakthrough in Brain Imaging
To address this challenge, a research team led by Professor Takuya Takahashi from the Graduate School of Medicine at Yokohama City University, Japan, has made a significant breakthrough in understanding the cause of Long COVID brain fog

In 1960, Dr. Jane Goodall’s early fieldwork observing chimpanzees at Gombe Stream Game Reserve, in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), unveiled groundbreaking research of shared behaviors between humans and apes.

The Jane Goodall Institute announced on October 1, 2025, that Jane Goodall died at 91. A primatologist, conservationist, animal advocate, educator, and National Geographic Explorer, her work revolutionized our understanding of the natural world.

A team of physicists say they have found a way to sidestep Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, one of the more troublesome and irritating rules of our universe.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, for the uninitiated, states that it is not possible to exactly measure or calculate both the position and momentum of an object at the same time. 

With macroscopic objects, for example a basketball or Danny DeVito, the principle doesn't matter too much. For example, you could measure Danny DeVito's position using light, and know that the light you used hasn't pushed him hard enough for you to be uncertain about his momentum. But in the quantum realm, it becomes a real problem.

Before we measure an electron's position, its wavefunction is spread out over an area, giving us probabilities about where the electron will be found. Hit an electron with light to measure its position, and its momentum increases, shrinking its wave function and localizing it around its position. But with that, you lose information about the electron's momentum as you impart energy into the electron, altering it. The more precise you want to be about one property, the less you know of the other. The more you know of the object's position, the less you know about its speed and mass, and vice versa. 

This principle is as tested as it is frustrating, and has held up nearly a century after its discovery by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. But a team of physicists from the UK and Australia say that with a few clever little tradeoffs, it is possible to sidestep the principle and gain precision about both properties at a level better than the "standard quantum limit".

A few years ago, one of us (Myles Allen) asked a Chinese delegate at a climate conference why Beijing had gone for "carbon neutrality" for its 2060 target rather than "climate neutrality" "or net zero," both of which were more fashionable terms at the time.

Her response: "Because we know what it means."

It was a revealing answer: China, unlike many other countries, tends not to make climate commitments that it doesn't understand or intend to keep. And that's why its latest pledge—cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 7%–10% by 2035, as part of its commitments under the Paris agreement—matters more than the underwhelmed response might suggest.

To be fair on those other countries, lofty goals have played a role in driving the climate conversation about what is possible: there is always the argument that it is better to aim for the moon and miss than aim for the gutter and hit it.

But the climate crisis needs more than aspirations. It needs concrete, plausible plans.

That's what makes China's pledge so significant: Beijing has form in only promising what it plans to deliver. Having promised to peak emissions this decade, barely 50 years after it began to industrialize in earnest, it looks set to achieve that. And in the process, become a world leader in wind power, solar energy and electric vehicles.