An orbital sunrise with comet C/2023.

Scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have observed a rare type of exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system, whose atmospheric composition challenges our understanding of how it formed. 

Officially named PSR J2322-2650b, this Jupiter-mass object appears to have an exotic helium-and-carbon-dominated atmosphere unlike any ever seen before. Soot clouds likely float through the air, and deep within the planet, these carbon clouds can condense and form diamonds. How the planet came to be is a mystery. The paper appears Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

“This was an absolute surprise,” said study co-author Peter Gao of the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington. “I remember after we got the data down, our collective reaction was ‘What the heck is this?’ It's extremely different from what we expected.”

Orcas are all about working smarter, not harder, as they coordinate in their pods to corral and stun their prey.

The Artemis II crew will observe parts of the Moon never before seen by human eyes. Their exact view will depend on lunar surface lighting (aka the Moon's phase) as they fly by, which in turn depends on launch timing.

Dive in with Ernie Wright, Artemis II Visualization Lead.

New research has found that Fiddler crabs are playing an unheralded role when it comes to hoovering up microplastics found in the world's mangrove forests and salt marshes.

Scientists studying a thriving population of Fiddler crabs in a polluted mangrove forest in Colombia have found that they can ingest and break down large quantities of small plastic particles in the sediment.

The ability to mobilize large amounts of sediment for feeding and sheltering, and the creature's specialized digestive processes, which earn it the reputation of being an "ecosystem engineer," can break down plastics within days, much faster than sunlight and waves.

However, scientists say that this litter recycling service may come at a cost, with the potential release of harmful nanoplastics into their tissues and, consequently, the food chain.

It's difficult to work out what is going on in your own mind, let alone anyone else's. That's one of the reasons why people with aphantasia, or who do not have an inner monologue (anendophasia), may not realize that their minds work differently from other people's.

Aphantasia is a difference in the way the brain generates mental imagery. When the majority of people are asked to picture a horse, for example, they really do see a horse clearly in their mind's eye. You may see details of the horse you are picturing, its long, flowing mane, or its horrendous white sweat quite clearly. For around 1-4 percent of people worldwide, or around 82-380 million people on Earth, that is not the case.

"Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images – a neurological variation that affects how people think, dream, remember, and learn. When someone with aphantasia tries to visualize an apple, a loved one's face, or a childhood memory, they experience no mental pictures," the Aphantasia Network explains.

"Instead of mental pictures, your mind works with facts, concepts, and knowledge. You know what a horse looks like – four legs, mane, tail – you just can't see one in your head."

Google Maps has got fresh competition. Using machine learning, computer engineers have developed an interactive map that shows 3D models of the world's buildings – practically every single one of them. Here's how it works and how you can tinker around with it yourself. 

Called the GlobalBuildingAtlas, the freely available map features nearly all of the world’s 2.75 billion buildings, which presumably includes your home, your favourite restaurant, the hospital you were born in, and so on. Each structure is displayed with a resolution of 3 x 3 meters (approx. 10 x 10 feet), capturing the shape and size of each building with surprisingly good accuracy. 

Around 97 percent (2.68 billion) of the buildings are displayed in the highest level of detail, plus the map contains buildings from regions often missing in global maps, such as Africa, South America, and rural areas.

Careful reanalysis of data from more than a decade ago indicates that Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, does not have a vast ocean beneath its icy surface, as suggested previously. Instead, a journey below the frozen exterior likely involves more ice giving way to slushy tunnels and pockets of meltwater near the rocky core.

Data from NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn initially led researchers to suspect a large ocean composed of liquid water under the ice on Titan. However, when they modeled the moon with an ocean, the results didn't match the physical properties described by the data.

For more than a century, people have considered Alzheimer's disease (AD) an irreversible illness. Consequently, research has focused on preventing or slowing it, rather than recovery. Despite billions of dollars spent on decades of research, there has never been a clinical trial of any drug to reverse and recover from AD.

A research team from Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals (UH) and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center has now challenged this long-held dogma in the field, testing whether brains already badly afflicted with advanced AD could recover. 

The study, led by Kalyani Chaubey, from the Pieper Laboratory, was published online Dec. 22 in Cell Reports Medicine. Using diverse preclinical mouse models and analysis of human AD brains, the team showed that the brain’s failure to maintain normal levels of a central cellular energy molecule, NAD+, is a major driver of AD, and that maintaining proper NAD+ balance can prevent and even reverse the disease. 

NAD+ levels decline naturally across the body, including the brain, as people age. Without proper NAD+ balance, cells eventually become unable to execute many of the critical processes required for proper functioning and survival. In this study, the team showed that the decline in NAD+ is even more severe in the brains of people with AD, and that this same phenomenon also occurs in mouse models of the disease. 

While AD is a uniquely human condition, it can be studied in the laboratory with mice that have been genetically engineered to express genetic mutations known to cause AD in people. 

More than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the positively charged particle at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand the proton.

High school physics teachers describe them as featureless balls with one unit each of positive electric charge — the perfect foils for the negatively charged electrons that buzz around them. College students learn that the ball is actually a bundle of three elementary particles called quarks. But decades of research have revealed a deeper truth, one that’s too bizarre to fully capture with words or images.

“This is the most complicated thing that you could possibly imagine,” said Mike Williams, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “In fact, you can’t even imagine how complicated it is.”

Galápagos penguins are all about working smarter, not harder. For generations, they've taught their young to watch pelicans diving for food, so they can sweep in at the last second for an easy meal.

With our "Eyes on the Solar System" site, you can track the location of the planets and moons—and over 160 NASA spacecraft—in real time, using actual NASA data, right from your desktop or phone. eyes.nasa.gov

Try "Eyes on Asteroids" and "Eyes on the Earth," too
eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids…
eyes.nasa.gov/apps/earth/

The average adult human body contains 206 bones—the hardened mixtures of calcium, minerals, and collagen that provide the biological scaffolding that walks us through our day. While we may not think of them much, bones are incredibly resilient. But if they do break, they have this nifty trick of regrowing themselves.

Teeth, however, are not bones. Although they’re made of some of the same stuff and are the hardest material in the human body (thanks to its protective layer of enamel), they lack the crucial ability to heal and regrow themselves. But that may not always be the case. Japanese researchers are moving forward with an experimental drug that promises to regrow human teeth. Human trials began in September 2024.